Storm Surge
by Vera Rozalsky
Summary: Sequel to ‘Behind Glass.’ The prospect of life in Azkaban wonderfully focuses the mind. Draco/Neville/Hermione Spoilers for ‘Amends’ and ‘In Which the Princess’ to end of 1998. Rated M for bad language, sex consensual , violence including torture.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

**Genre warning: **I should warn everyone at the outset that this is neither standard-issue Draco/Hermione nor standard-issue Draco/Neville. According to Draco, it's about him, and those other two are walk-ons (as are the rest of you).

**Spoiler alert:** As a post-_Deathly Hallows_ story, assume spoilers for all HP books through _Deathly Hallows_. Note also that the 14 chapters of this story take place in the same timeline as _Amends, or Truth and Reconciliation_ and _In Which the Princess Rescues the Dragon. _Readers of those stories will recognize some of the events_—_which is to say that this narrative contains spoilers for those tales. If you'd rather hear the plot twists POV Hermione or Andromeda, read those stories before this one.

**Rating notes:** This story contains a lot more sex and violence (both real and imagined) than any of my other stories to date. Draco has a mouth on him, so even if he doesn't say the bad words aloud, he certainly thinks them. And he's a bored, spoiled, randy 18-year-old boy with time on his hands.

***

**Prologue (**_**Behind Glass, **_**IX)**

The Dark Lord is dead. The storm of battle is over, and the sun is coming up over the Great Hall. Draco hears the defenders of the castle marching back and forth, their booted feet crunching on broken glass. Longbottom, clumsy as ever, clatters through and drops the Sword of Gryffindor on the table with a resounding thunk, and then tucks into a vulgarly noisy breakfast. Granger and Weasley thump him on the shoulder in congratulation, Weasley saying, "Hey Nev, you got the snake! Great bloody beast it was, too!" Potter and Lovegood talk nonsense about Blibbering Humdingers, while Headmistress McGonagall supervises the collection of the corpses. He hears her dour Scottish voice calling the roll of the dead.

He's still clinging to the wreckage, clasping the rescuing hand. It isn't Potter's hand but his mother's. Someone's mouth is moving against the back of his neck murmuring an incoherent litany; tears, not his, are running down the side of his face. He has never seen his father cry, and he doesn't see it now, but it's his father's voice against his neck, choked with tears.

Then the rest of his life begins, and there is no glass standing between him and the naked elements.

***

It's approaching noon, and Draco is still sitting in the Great Hall with his parents. They've no idea where to go. He's still awake, though feeling woozy from the stink of his own singed hair, burned clothes and rank sweat. His mother has fallen asleep, her head in his lap and her legs tucked up on the long bench, but she hasn't let go of his hand. His father still has his arms around him, but Draco can tell from the rhythm of his breathing that he too is falling asleep.

The victors have shouted and proclaimed, but none of the news has anything to do with him.

An hour after the battle, Kingsley Shacklebolt was appointed Acting Minister for Magic. (Within the week, the Wizengamot will confirm him as Minister.)

Bellatrix Lestrange, his Aunt Bella, is dead. It took four of them to bring her down: Granger, Lovegood, and the girl Weasley to duel her into a corner, and Molly Weasley, Ron's fat mum, to deliver the killing blow.

His renegade cousin, Nymphadora Tonks, the one who married the werewolf, is dead. So is the werewolf himself, as well as Nymphadora's Muggle-born father.

Severus Snape is dead, too, and Potter announces to the Great Hall in general—as if it were Potter, and not Shacklebolt, who's Minister for Magic—that Snape was Dumbledore's man, and had been all along.

If he weren't so hollow with exhaustion, he'd weep at the news of that last betrayal.

The victors have finished the task of bringing out the dead. McGonagall paces the other end of the Great Hall where the bodies have been laid out in rows. The late morning light reveals without mercy that, witch or not, this is a woman in her seventies who has been working all night. The lines in her face are more prominent than Draco has ever seen them, and it doesn't take much to see the skull beneath the skin. She stops before each row of mortal remains and bows her head, in the teacher's farewell to her students or the officer's salute to her fallen troops.

He's not sure where the other bodies are. His aunt Bella would be among them, and the other Death Eaters, who once were family friends and his father's courtiers, and then were minions of the snake-faced Dark Lord, and now … He heard someone say that Fenrir Greyback is dead. Someone else—one of the Weasley boys, an older one he doesn't know—spits, "Good riddance." Much as he hates the Weasleys, he hated Greyback more.

He can't fall asleep, tempting though it is. Someone has to keep watch while his parents sleep. He's burning with thirst now, and his head hurts. There are pitchers and tumblers and goblets on the table, the remains of the victory celebration that began at mid-morning with Madam Rosmerta distributing butterbeer and firewhiskey from the stores of the Three Broomsticks. Those festivities have since moved outside to the grounds. He looks longingly at those vessels—just water would suffice now—but they're out of reach and he doesn't want to wake his sleeping parents.

There's no one left in here but the disregarded and the dead.

Minerva McGonagall meets his eyes from across the Great Hall. He's not sure whether to think of her as the Headmistress or the General—the victorious, _enemy_ General, or maybe the Colonel of the garrison—and so he composes his face, trying to look inoffensive and neutral. He realizes that he has no idea what inoffensive looks like. He's never cared before about _not offending._

She walks toward him, face set in stern lines, takes one of the tumblers from the table and hands it to him. Water. Nothing has ever tasted so delicious before. She tells him that someone will be arriving shortly to take care of him and his parents.

Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy are under arrest by one o'clock, to be interned under the state of emergency. Draco is freed and instructed to remain at Hogwarts.

***

It's the Saturday of the second week in May.

In the Slytherin common room, the keynote is boredom_. _Millicent Bulstrode and Greg Goyle are playing endless games of Exploding Snap. Pansy Parkinson starts at each explosion and glares over her shoulder at them. She and Blaise Zabini are playing chess with serious attention.

Blaise remarks that she's a _much_ better player than he'd ever suspected, certainly better than Draco, and he wishes he'd known that years ago; he wouldn't have wasted so much time playing with a _loser._

Then he pushes it beyond the acceptable, saying that if _certain people_ hadn't sucked Slytherin House into their political games, there might have been a decent chess scene at Hogwarts, what with Ron Weasley being one of the better players of their generation. (In spite of himself, Draco is impressed; Blaise is low-key but he has good intelligence about everybody.)

And even that wouldn't have been so bad, Blaise adds, if _some people_, for all their Death Eater posturing, hadn't turned out to be nothing but talk. If they, or their _parents,_ hadn't been keen on the Dark Lord, they should have said so at the outset, when it might have done some good.

Draco would challenge him to a duel then and there, except… the damned wand isn't working. He has his wand back, but it's dead useless.

(In a truly theatrical scene of chivalric condescension, Potter returned it to him, just minutes after the Aurors took his parents away. He really hadn't been in the mood for all of that graciousness-to-the-defeated-adversary, and it didn't help that a photographer from the _Daily Prophet _materialized out of nowhere to document the occasion.)

The wand he got at age eleven doesn't work any more. It's like having a limb go dead on him. _His wand doesn't work, _not reliably, and not Pansy's either, that he borrowed on the sly.

It scarcely matters. Except for Blaise's pin-sticking, they're studiously ignoring him, and have been ever since the battle. Greg Goyle shambles about looking sad; he's missing Vince Crabbe, his almost-brother, in spite of the great lump almost killing them. Once in a while, when the others aren't looking, Greg glances at him apologetically.

That's almost worse than being ignored.

Pansy jiggles her black-stockinged foot restlessly, dangling her shoe from her toe; she taps her nails on the table, making her jet bracelet rattle faintly. Blaise rubs his forehead and pinches the bridge of his nose. Millicent and Greg flop on the floor with their cards, then sit up, then lean backward against the chairs, as if no posture is comfortable. Clearly, they're all reaching the end of the possibilities for staving off boredom, and they're feeling physically restless.

Their manner to each other is that of bored siblings trying to make the best of it; their manner to Draco is cold-shoulder. He's shut out. The other seventh-year Slytherins are gone: either they're battle casualties or in hiding or their parents have spirited them away. Rumor has it that Theodore Nott is somewhere in Central Europe with his mother, but that's the only specific news he's heard.

They whisper among themselves, not even bothering to shut him out with magic. He's beneath contempt, and invisible.

Worse, he's fairly sure the four of them didn't even fight on the same side—Pansy and Greg declared for Voldemort, of course, Pansy quite publicly—but he's suspicious of Blaise and Millicent, who definitely didn't turn up in the Great Hall in the company of the Death Eaters. Certainly Slughorn, their Head of House, went over to the other side quite spectactularly, and the other day, Draco had overheard him saying something to Millicent in commendation of her assistance at the Hog's Head pub. Blaise attended the Order of Merlin award ceremony with his mother; if the famous Madam Zabini had an invite to _that_ New Ministry do…

So Pansy is willing to play chess with Blaise Zabini the fucking _traitor,_ but she won't speak to him. If it were any other Slytherin girl cold-shouldering him, it wouldn't hurt so much, but this is Pansy, whom he's known forever. It was she who first introduced him to sex, or rather to the sexes, when they were both four. He still remembers how she enticed him behind a hedge in the formal gardens to show him hers in exchange for a glance at his. (And she cheated, too—it was a grab as well as a glance.)

Pansy always tickled his sense of sex—and fun—because she was a good Pureblood girl who nevertheless knew all sorts of naughty things. There was her jet bracelet, looped with the blond hair of a dead Muggle—the exact shade of his—very Death Eater chic, he thought, although she confessed it was actually of Muggle manufacture.

And then at the beginning of fourth year, she'd come back to school with her hair bobbed, in imitation of Theda Bara, the Vamp.

"A vampire?" he'd asked in alarm, freshly impressed with her daring.

She explained to him that the Vamp was a _film star,_ not a real vampire but just a Muggle. "No more a vampire than _I_ am," she said, "But what style." And then without warning, she nuzzled his neck and left a sharp-toothed kiss there, and laughed when he squirmed away in indignation.

It was weeks before the mark faded.

She shared his taste in mischief at school too, from mimicking the despised Potter clique to bullying first-years to sneaking sugar quills in class. They'd always had fun together, and it wasn't as if he were always reluctant when she wanted to play more sophisticated games. Fifth year, they'd had quite a bit of fun on the couch in the common room, and when they established themselves there, everyone else knew to clear out and leave them a bit of privacy. All he'd had to do was cast a languishing look in her direction; she'd pull a face, roll her eyes, but join him on the couch nonetheless.

He really regrets the number of times he turned her down in sixth year.

He's made it alive through everything, and now that the crisis is over (at least for the time) he's thinking about sex. A lot. Not surprising, given that he hasn't had much energy for the subject in the last two years, and he's not quite eighteen. With a pang of bitter envy, he still remembers how in sixth year, Potter and Weasley and Granger and Brown and the Weaselette were happily—or not so happily—caught up in their love dramas. He spent that year in fear for his life, while they fussed about who was snogging whom. No doubt they're all basking in their glory now and getting set to play happy families, to judge from the front-page picture in the _Prophet:_ Weasley and Granger joined at the hip, Potter and the Weaselette likewise, Longbottom and that Lovegood freak shoulder to shoulder at the periphery. He shudders to think what the offspring of the duffer and the freak would look like. For the sake of the wizarding gene pool, he hopes they're just good friends.

Pansy is bored—very bored. With a theatrical yawn, she checkmates Blaise, then suggests an outing to Hogsmeade. Over their objections or intertia, she organizes them all, and the four of them set off together (Pansy, Blaise, Millicent and Greg), more or less amicably in spite of any lurking political differences. After all, they've been housemates since they were eleven years old, the world's more or less in truce now, and they're strenuously avoiding any discussion of what happened. The thing they have in common is that they _all_ despise Draco, because he—and more importantly, his father—failed to come through for any side.

Greg Goyle might be the exception, but he's depressed and bored so he goes along with them. Just as he steps through the gate into the dungeon hallway, he casts a pitying look back at Draco, who glares at him. _You fucking traitor,_ _sell me out for a jaunt to Honeydukes, will you?_ But of course he doesn't say it. There's no point.

***

Once they've left, he paces the common room. He's trying to decide if it infuriates him more to be pitied or despised, and decides on balance that he'd rather be despised. Pity makes his skin crawl. Like that damned ghost that haunts the girls' loo… who showed up in the prefects' bath the other night, commiserated with him about his difficult life, and then presumed to give him a fucking _hug._ It took hours for his teeth to stop chattering.

And he rather suspects she's been perving on him, but he won't think about that. Not least because somebody told him that she's the ghost of a fucking _Mudblood. _

He's come to the gloomy end of the common room, which is graced by a Quidditch team portrait from the 1910s, back in the days when witches played on the Slytherin House team. Someone commissioned this more-than-life-scale painting in honor of their seven-year winning streak, in the course of which no other House team ever scored a goal on them.

There are the two Emilys—the Chaser, Emily Rosier, who went on to play for the Harpies, and the Beater, Emily Chattox—

Who sees him, and turns her back rather pointedly to talk to Miss Rosier.

After more than three years, she _still_ isn't speaking to him.

Really, except for his mother, all of the women in his life are _most_ unsatisfactory. At least Emily doesn't pity him; that would be unbearable. But things once had been much better…

***

In this very place, when he was eleven, he'd been astonished to meet a pair of sparkling dark eyes, and to hear a contralto voice with a Northern accent say, "Look, it's a little Malfoy. What's your name, little Malfoy?" If he'd been even a bit younger, he would have had the urge to hide behind his mother, but in any event she wasn't there.

"I'm Draco," he'd said, trying not to look down—because after all, he was Lucius Malfoy's son. She laughed, and winked at him.

"You're the handsomest one yet." She cocked her head and looked at him appraisingly. "A Quidditch player, I'd warrant."

This was familiar territory; he began to lose his shyness. "I'm only a first-year. But yes. Second year, Father says I will play on the House team. Seeker. He's going to get me my own racing broom."

"Aye, we'll get along then," she said, "as long as you behave yourself."

Behaving himself turned out to mean giving her a recap of every Quidditch game that their House team played, listening to her occasional complaints about the priggish Head Boy in the 1940s who had moved her team's portrait to its current obscurity (apparently in disapproval of witches playing Quidditch), and laughing at what he now recognizes as fairly outrageous flirtation. Among other things, she wished aloud that she could get out of her portrait so she could have a proper go at knocking him off his broom.

No, not just flirtation. The knocking-him-off-his-broom sally gave him a naughty shiver, but that was the least of it. With time, it came to serious double entendre, some of which he still blushes to recall. She really did fancy him, in an odd hoydenish way—odd, because he was a living boy and she was a girl in an enchanted painting. Except she got impatient with him for the M-word, which she said nice Pureblood wizard boys should _not_ use.

When he came back from summer hols at the beginning of fourth year, he told her the funny story about how the Death Eaters showed up at the Quidditch World Cup to do a spot of Muggle-baiting. She flushed red and then went dead pale and refused to speak to him again, ever. In particular, he suspects, because he'd somehow let slip a hint that his father was one of those masked figures, and that he looked forward to joining their ranks in his time.

He asked his father about her: Emily Chattox, class of 1911, Beater on the long-undefeated Slytherin team of the 1900s and 1910s. To his surprise, Father went icy the way he does when talking about lack of respect for the old wizarding blood, and told him that she had done something unbecoming a Pureblood witch and then got mixed up in Muggle ruckus, and Draco was never to speak her name in his hearing again.

Unspoken, back there in the mists of time, was an insult to the Family, but Draco didn't dare ask for the details.

***

He stands in front of the portrait, eyeing her up while she chats with her teammate. She's quite as fanciable as ever: a Slytherin, and a Quidditch player (a Beater!), and a Pureblood, with aquiline good looks and a naughty sense of fun. (Full points.) And a gorgeous abundance of dark hair, rather like Pansy's but _feet_ of it, cascading down her back over her green robes. He'd even showed her portrait to Pansy in an attempt to convince her to grow out her sleek bob, wanting to know how the heaviness of that much hair would feel in his hands. Pansy had refused, of course, and laughed at him.

Under the archaic but somehow naughty clothes—he understands that Emily's look is hybrid Muggle-and-wizard, so she's wearing the slim ankle-length skirts of 1911 under her Quidditch robes—he notes the lines of a rather nice figure, abundant of bust and dainty of ankle (rather like Pansy, again).

He wishes everything didn't come back to Pansy. No, he's not going to think about it. He contemplates persuading Pansy to fool around with him when they get back, and decides he'd rather not suffer the indignity of being turned down. Likely she fancies that slippery bastard Zabini, who's forever smirking at him as if daring him to live up to his Death Eater pretensions. Yes, Zabini has been smirking like that for a long time, hasn't he? And it's damned annoying.

He decides he'll have a hot bath and a good wank to clear the mind, and then set off for the library. He's quite thoroughly sick of the common room, and at this point doesn't care if he never sees it again.

***

In the worst of times, one makes the effort to look unfazed. Draco remembers the hellish summer after his fifth Hogwarts year, after his father was taken to Azkaban. All that summer, his mother was already awake when he got up in the morning. She sat at breakfast with her face beautifully composed, her long shining hair flowing over the shoulders of her best robes, and poured out coffee while talking about how the weather was affecting the rose garden and what he should be doing to prepare for the coming school year. Even then, he recognized grace under pressure.

He combs out his hair in front of the mirror and reaches behind to fasten it with an onyx and silver clasp that his father gave him when he turned fifteen. Now that his hair has grown out, he's gratified at how far his reflection reminds him of his father; it serves him as keepsake and reassurance. Even though he's still wearing school robes, he doesn't look like a schoolboy anymore. He draws himself up to his full height and straightens the prefect's badge on his robes. He folds up and puts away the letter that bears the seal of the censor at Azkaban Fortress, and turns from the mirror to the door. Time to make his best effort at doing his appointed rounds as before, in the curious limbo that is Hogwarts in the wake of battle, pretending to be a school. To the library, even though it is Saturday and all of his friends—or ex-friends—have gone to Hogsmeade.

On his way there, he unexpectedly meets Granger in the hallway by the Headmistress' Office. He stares at her, a little surprised to meet this old enemy—and then, most satisfyingly, she glowers at him. It's oddly pleasant to be hated outright, at least by her. All's right with the world if the Mudblood hates him. But then he notices her hand closing on her wand, and feels a little shiver of fear. If she had at him now, he'd be defenseless.

He decides that discretion is the better part of valor, turns his back, and walks away as quickly as his dignity as Pureblood and prefect will allow.

***

**Author's notes:** Emily Chattox is a character from A. J. Hall's _Lust over Pendle, _and in that novel she appears in a Slytherin House Quidditch team portrait of the same vintage, a photograph rather than a painting. Those who know that story can giggle in anticipation of what Draco is going to learn about her in Chapter 13.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

***

Draco went to the library and did what work he could, reading Potions for two hours. He kept thinking, somewhat childishly, about Pansy and Greg and Millicent and Blaise amusing themselves in Hogsmeade. The May weather was distractingly pleasant; a breeze from the open window in the library tickled his face as he bowed his head over his reading.

Returning to his rooms, he was not paying attention at all; to say that the attack took him by surprise was an understatement. When the first hex hit him, he doubled over, vomiting slugs; the next one buckled his legs out from under him. Someone grabbed his right wrist and twisted it until he dropped his wand. (They must have known, somehow, from the fact he didn't immediately retaliate.)

No _Expelliarmus;_ they weren't duelists but a mob. Someone raked fingernails down his right arm as they tore the sleeve of his robe—with such force that the seam at the shoulder gave way and unexpectedly he was half naked.

Someone else pulled him backward and pinned his left wrist to the floor while yanking up the sleeve. And then, as expected: "A Death Eater, all right."

He found himself staring up into the face of a little girl. She couldn't be more than twelve, and her school robe had the insignia of Hufflepuff House. She had a Hufflepuff face, too, round cheeks and round eyes, sea-green like a cat's, and hair that wasn't red enough to call ginger. Thoroughly ordinary. A duffer's face. Huffleduffers, he used to call that House.

She smiled down at him. "Well, _Malfoy,_ what are we going to do with you?" It made his gut go cold, that smile, and the way she pronounced his family name as if it were something disgusting. She dug the toe of her shoe into his ribs, experimentally, as if feeling for the place to plant the first kick.

And then the kick landed and knocked the wind out of him, and there was another flurry of hexes, that added more pain and nausea, and a blaze of further pain as someone grabbed him and dragged a knife across his nape to shear his long hair, and someone else shouted "Let's do it Muggle style!" and kicked him again. Something sharp hit his head—he still doesn't know what, but that started the blood running over his face, and the sight of it seemed to excite them even further. Instinctively he put up right hand to shield his face. The left hand was still pinioned.

"So what are we going to do with it?" asks one of the boys.

"Kick it some more," said another voice.

"Poke its eyes out!" Someone grabbed his right hand and dragged it away from his face. He started to tremble, in spite of himself, in sheer terror: his all-too-vivid imagination was drawing the picture for him: the pain, the blood, the plunge into eternal darkness…

"Stomp it to death!" someone else cried. A weirdly detached piece of his mind wondered why they were suggesting Muggle-style tactics, until another piece answered:_ it will take a long time to die that way._ Multiple hands were tearing at his clothes, and he suddenly understood that they were meaning to strip him before they did any of the above, and he desperately pulled at the hands holding his wrists.

In the cacophony of suggestions that followed—they seemed to be arguing about what indignity to visit on him next—he heard things he didn't even want to think about: _they can't be meaning to do that to me. No. Please no…_ and then nausea convulsed him again, and he vomited another handful of slugs, that slithered wetly down the side of his neck.

And then a carrying baritone voice cut across the noise of the mob, and a space opened, suddenly, between him and his attackers, which space was immediately occupied by a figure like a bulwark—ragged robes swirling behind legs in heavy trousers—legs like tree trunks. "The war is over!" the voice said. "And if you want it to stay over, you'll clear out."

A storm of protest broke out and drowned further remonstrance. A second voice, in a higher register, a woman's voice, cut in—"He's said it three times that I heard. Now _clear out._"

Someone was leaning over him, and though he flinched, there was no need. He was gathered up in large strong arms, and briefly before he lost consciousness, he thought it was his father carrying him upstairs to bed.

***

He drifted in and out of dream; he was in the Great Hall once more, clutching his mother's hand, and then the most offensive voice he knew broke into the dream. Granger. He turned to glare—what was _she_ doing here?—and the air tightened in his lungs, the atmosphere suddenly freighted with magic about to strike. Not just magic, but—no mistaking its electricity crawling over his skin—the Killing Curse. Inexplicably, rather than emerging from the tip of a wand, it was condensing out of the air; green annihilation was hurtling toward him in slow motion from all directions in the last moment of his life.

Not here,he thought, clutching his mother's hand, not in the Great Hall, not _Granger—_

And then it was gone.

He put his mother's hand to his cheek and whimpered in gratitude at still being alive. After this, after all this, still to be alive was sweet enough to bring tears. That Power had passed over his head with its lightning and spared him. It couldn't have been Granger; she's only a student like him. It must have been Bella. But Bella loves him and never would try to kill him. It was much too confusing. It would be much easier to sleep—if only the delirium would drop him into the dark.

Someone lifted his shoulders off the pillow, tipped his head back, and momentarily his mouth was filled with something bitter and aromatic, with a piney finish like rosemary… Dreamless Sleep, his Potions brain said, before he slid into the abyss.

***

He doesn't tell his mother or father what happened. It would only worry them. He already knows that they're worried from the letters that they write him, the letters overwritten with the floating transparent sigil of the Azkaban censor.

His mother's letters are firm, directive, doting: _Make sure you're getting enough sleep. Eat well, or as well as you can under the circumstances. Remember that things have changed and don't forget that Harry Potter owes me a life debt. If all else fails, you can call in that debt on my behalf. I don't think I'll be needing it. And don't eat too many sweets._ He smiles bitterly at that last one. (As if there were any such thing for him, in this place.) Her handwriting is angled, swooping, and her name is signed with a spiraling flourish at the end—the signature of the mother he knows, silk and alabaster over a core of molten steel.

His father's letters belong to an ancient genre, The Statesman to His Son. They're full of advice, but it's abstract and valedictory. _There are tides, and riptides, and the undertow that will sweep you out to sea. Remember what I told you in Normandy: the sea does not love you. It does not care what your plans are. There are powers and then there are Powers. Watch the weather, because it's changing._ The hand is wobbly and there are smudges where the ink ran and the parchment cockled in fingertip-sized circles. Draco wonders how damp the walls are in Azkaban. He doesn't want to think that those smudges were made by his father's tears.

What Lucius had said to him, nearly his last words: "Learn from my example, and don't think you can play the Powers to your own purposes. Because the Powers will fuck you until you bleed and then leave you for dead." Draco was shocked by the vulgarity of the language, and it's taken him weeks to absorb the message. He's listening now, as he lies in a bed in the hospital wing pretending to sleep, as Longbottom and the Mudblood talk over him in hushed voices.

No, not the Mudblood. Granger. He has to lose that word. Longbottom is a Power now, and he gave Draco the glare of death the last time that word slipped out of his mouth. He's not sure when fat little Neville Longbottom turned into this warm wall of a man, this soft-spoken guerrilla chieftain, but he knows a Power when he sees one. He's heard the epic tale half a dozen times from as many mouths, and the image is indelible: Longbottom defied the Dark Lord to his face, told him he'd join him when hell froze over, and for his trouble was bound and set on fire (this part makes Draco shudder, from a fear four hundred years old) and then somehow produced the sword with which he smote the Dark Lord's familiar. _Smote_, not merely whacked or cut or decapitated.

What's impressive is not the heroic deed but the stark berserker courage that preceded it—the defiance flung at the gates of hell from an absolutely hopeless position. Halfway out of dream, he realizes where he's seen it before. That bronze-age warrior stared at him out of Longbottom's eyes two years ago, on the day that he made the mistake of alluding to the locked ward in St. Mungo's—and then leapt at him, as Longbottom went for his throat, _lunged_ at him and didn't care if he were pummeled to a bloody pulp by Crabbe and Goyle. It was Potter and Weasley who were thinking of consequences and restrained him as best they could.

Draco thinks Longbottom might well have killed him if they hadn't.

The other reason to lose the M-word is that Granger herself is a Power. He's been thinking over what happened in the hospital wing after the attack. As far as he can piece it together from overheard whispers and his own fragmentary memory, it was Longbottom and Granger who rescued him from the mob. When he woke up and glared at Granger, a spontaneous, _wandless_ Killing Curse began to take shape over his hapless head like lightning out of a storm cloud, and she herself stopped it. Because she could. Because she was the source.

_Oh._ Wandless Dark magic is nothing to fool with. It's the heart of the Old Ways, the magic so ancient that the spells are not in Latin, the power that you invoke with your body rather than channeling through a wand. The power that can save you if you're deprived of your wand and at the mercy of a Muggle mob. The power that families like the Malfoys and the Blacks have never stopped invoking, because they remember the Time of the Burning, and they're willing to gamble long-term damage against short-term safety. Dark Magicians die mad, but they die in their beds.

A Muggle-born invoked that power in his presence, and he damned well knows she didn't learn that out of a book, because that stuff is not written down.

And Longbottom, who is a Power, defers to her.

She's whispering back to Longbottom, "Yeah, the nightmares are worse at Grimmauld Place. That house hates me. As if post-traumatic stress weren't bad enough by itself."

She's sleeping at his Great-Aunt Walburga's house. Alone. The house that's somehow been deeded to bloody Potter. But that's another grievance, which he really can't afford just now. _Watch the weather, because it's changing._

A shadow falls across his closed eyelids; he opens them a sliver to see Longbottom, outlined against the light, reach across the narrow bed to touch Granger on the shoulder. There's something shockingly intimate about it—not the gesture itself but the emotion that accompanies it—a blood-warm wave of _feeling_ just washed over him. Only in the desperate days of the last year did he ever see gestures like that between his own parents, and he knows what they mean: _I'm yours until death._

***

Days after the attack, it was Minerva McGonagall, in her capacity as Headmistress, who told him what happened to Pansy and Greg and Blaise. The same day he was attacked, they were cut down in the High Street in Hogsmeade. No one knows what happened to Millicent; she's vanished. In the next breath, she informed him that he was not leaving the hospital wing until the Ministry approved Aurors to guard him, because it is not known how to reverse the curse that killed them. Sectumsempra. The curse that almost killed him in sixth year when Potter threw it at him. (Snape told him later that the bloody fool hadn't even known what it did, and Draco understands now that Snape was the only one who knew how to reverse it.)

McGonagall spares him the details that unfortunately he already knows. She does tell him that Pansy was asking for him at the last.

He keeps his features in a stoic mask until she leaves, and then he hides his face in the pillow and cries, for his whole world wiped out, for the effort in hauling Greg Goyle to safety in the Room of Hidden Things, for the thought of Pansy asking for him with her last blood-choked breath, even for the loss of sardonic Blaise Zabini, who maddeningly refused to take him as seriously as he felt he deserved as Heir of the House of Malfoy. He had thought that Blaise would be looking at him with faint ridicule when they were both a hundred and twenty years old.

It's Longbottom who sits by the bed, and hands him a glass of water and a wet towel for his face. It's Longbottom who listens, when he finds himself improbably voluble, telling stories into the far reaches of the night: all the fun they had in Slytherin House before everything went bad in sixth year, the jokes that he and Pansy and Greg and Vince told each other, the giggling over the 'Potter stinks' badges and the composition of the song 'Weasley is our king.' He forgets that he's telling these stories to one of Potter's cronies, because Longbottom is _nobody in particular_, just a warm, breathing, listening presence by the bedside, as the summer light fades into darkness and the darkness deepens and whitens with moonlight, then darkens again until it begins to pale into dawn. And, he realizes, it doesn't matter, because his friends are dead and the jokes they told might as well be scrawled in Latin on a wall in Pompeii.

The next morning, Longbottom refuses the bribe he offers—three Galleons—to let him into Slytherin dorm to choose a keepsake from Pansy's belongings. Two hours later, McGonagall is standing by his bed and telling him to get up because they are going to Slytherin dorm so that he can choose what he likes by way of keepsakes for Pansy and Greg, before they pack up the belongings of the dead students. Pansy's parents are in Azkaban, and he doesn't know what happened to Greg's father—not even whether he's dead or alive. The dormitory is being turned over as housing for war orphans.

He chooses the double-stranded jet necklace that Pansy wore with her green dress robes, once she grew out of her ridiculous attachment to the pink and frills that really didn't suit her. Ironically, it's of Muggle manufacture; he knows because Pansy told him so. She loved Muggle things, fringed shawls from the 1920s and pointy-toed shoes with Cuban heels and Victorian funerary jewelry. (Her favorite bracelet, that she was wearing when she died, quite gave him the shivers: faceted jet beads with loops of silk that were actually the blond hair of a long-dead Muggle.)

***

Longbottom refuses the second bribe as well, the handful of Galleons that Draco offers him to go down to Hogsmeade and buy firewhiskey. It's not only that Draco can't sleep—it's that he's tempted by the other sleep, the long one, the one from which he won't wake.

Madam Zabini came to Hogwarts to collect her son's possessions. She came to the hospital wing and reproached Draco with her son's death. She told him that it was he who had destroyed the honor of Slytherin House and with it her family's honor and her only son. That she had no doubt that Draco felt as little remorse for that as did his rotten father, who had destroyed the collective honor of the Purebloods by throwing in his lot with Voldemort. That there had been Purebloods who were neutral in the conflict, and wanted no part of either side, but no one would believe that now. That it was his part in the assassination of Dumbledore that had marked the Slytherins as the Death Eater junior auxiliaries, and forced McGonagall's hand during the battle so that the seventh-year students were cast out to join Voldemort or to wander the perilous no-man's-land between.

He had known nothing of Madam Zabini before this, except for what the world knew: that she was beautiful and much-married. Beautiful she certainly was, but more she was archaically terrifying. She stood there in her black robes edged in Kente cloth, with her shimmering bronze arms raised in an invocation to the spirits of the air, and called down the Furies on his head and on the House of Malfoy, _may it end in the darkness out of which it came_. She told him that he was the bad son of a worse father and if he died without issue and in only a tenth the agony she felt, she would feel the debt repaid.

He knows that if you mix firewhiskey and Dreamless Sleep, you will drift gently downward into the dark and never rise again, and that sounds very inviting just now.

Longbottom is a complete duffer at Potions, but apparently he knows the interactions. Not only does he refuse the bribe, but he picks Draco up by the shoulders so that he's propped up against the wall and can't avoid Longbottom's eyes, which then proceed to drill into his as the erstwhile duffer-at-Potions recites all of Draco's life debts, the ones he thought no one else knew, and the ones he didn't know himself. He learns that Severus Snape took the Unbreakable Vow to protect him on his assassination mission, and that Dumbledore and Snape between them agreed that if it came to it, Snape would take the assassin's role. He learns that his mother lied to Voldemort in exchange for the reassurance of his safety. He hears again what he'd rather not think about, how Potter and Granger and Weasley rescued him and Greg Goyle from the Fiendfyre in the Room of Hidden Things.

And, Longbottom says, all of them, the whole bloody committee—himself and Potter and Weasley and Granger and Snape and Draco's mother—will hound him from both sides of the Veil if ever again he shows such disrespect for the effort expended in saving him. There are better ways to go than idiot's suicide.

Finally Longbottom asks what would help him to sleep—aside from Dreamless Sleep, which should not be taken every night because it suppresses REM sleep.

In a very small voice, Draco tells him that his mother used to stroke his hair until he fell asleep. And sometimes she would hold him, too, but of course he's too old for that now.

The hair-stroking works when Longbottom does it, too. He sleeps soundly for the first time in days.

***


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

***

On the fifth of June, Draco turns eighteen, and he is very sure that this is the worst birthday of his entire life. With a superstitious shiver, he _hopes_ that it's the worst, because he knows, of course, that things can go downhill much further. Right now, he's on house arrest, but his jailers are sane. Right now, he's more or less safe. He knows from previous experience that it doesn't have to stay that way.

The Owl Post delivers letters from his parents in Azkaban, and they are the most worrying so far. His father's letter is in the usual style, but the thoughts are ragged and disconnected. His mother's verges on panic; she repeats her usual injunctions and asks him what is wrong. He knows what he hasn't been telling: the assault, of course, and then what allowed it to happen, which is that he is having trouble casting even ordinary spells. Even _Lumos_ only produces the desired result about a third of the time.

The dreaded word _Squib_ floats just under the surface now, all the time. They've never told him what happens to Squibs, and he's never thought about it, but certain facts now show in the livid light of nightmare. His mother and father were married at seventeen and eighteen respectively, but he wasn't born until they were in their late twenties. Old-style Purebloods marry early to produce heirs for their Family. He knows this, because the summer after he turned fourteen, his parents had The Talk with him, asking him if there were anyone he fancied from the acceptable Pureblood lines. Much earlier, he remembers the silence, and the tears standing in his mother's eyes, when he asked her why he had no brothers or sisters.

Maybe he did.

He's sitting at the improvised desk in the curtained-off partition of the hospital wing that's now his entire world, head in hands over his mother's letter, when McGonagall comes in with Potter and Weasley in tow. There's no way that he can pretend to be asleep, which might make them go away faster.

The two of them are in black robes with scarlet facings. Aurors-in-training, sans NEWTs, which is impressive, he supposes. Weasley is smirking, and Potter looks uneasy. Neither of them will meet his eyes, which is fine because he doesn't want to get into a pissing match with the two of them, least of all now when he's at such a severe disadvantage. Longbottom is hovering in the doorway like a bodyguard--whose, he's not sure.

The worst is when he looks up and catches Potter staring at him with a combination of pity and revulsion.

_As if he were some pitiful crushed thing that had the ill grace to be twitching yet._

Potter and Weasley go outside to the main hospital wing and forget he's even in there and that the partition isn't a wall but a flimsy curtain. They're talking about all sorts of things he's quite sure he's not meant to know. From ancient habit and because he can't shut out their voices, he eavesdrops.

He learns that they're paying some kind of damages to Gringotts for something that happened during the war. Potter has paid off his own part and paid Weasley's part as well, to prevent Gringotts from taking the Weasley parents' pitiful hovel, but Granger had to work off her share, so now she's over at the Ministry doing something arcane for the War Crimes Commission. Potter jokingly calls her the Recording Angel; apparently she's in charge of the archives for the prosecution. She's working with someone named Derwent, who's supposed to be one of the big names in Pensieve analysis. Draco squirms in humiliation at the idea she's looking at his family's financial records and their memories and maybe even _his_ memories, because someone from St. Mungo's was here last week to Pensieve him…

He tries to comfort himself with the notion that she's miserable too, because he saw the _Prophet _article about her falling-out with Weasley. Rita Skeeter speculated that Harry was the _tertium quid_ and now that the war was over, the triangular battlefield romance had gone sour. Draco knows that's ridiculous on the face of it, because it's plain as day that there's no more chemistry between Granger and Potter than between… well, McGonagall and Dumbledore. They're a team, nothing more. Besides, the Weaselette would hex Granger to the Shetland Islands if there _had_ been anything between her and Potter, and _that_ would have made headlines in the _Prophet _for sure.

Weasley grumbles that she was working too much and couldn't be bloody bothered with cooking and all she'd talk about was her bloody parents.

Potter replies that Weasley had both parents, but Granger's mother and father were in Australia with their memories modified, and if it were his parents he'd be frantic to get them back. And apparently this Derwent person is the only one in wizarding Britain who knows enough about how to undo whatever it was that Granger did to them.

What did she do to them, anyway?

Modified their memories, apparently. They don't know who they are and they don't know they have a daughter, but from what Potter is saying, it sounds as if they have been supplied with a full set of alternate memories and a fully functional life somewhere in Australia, plying whatever Mugglish trade it is they do. And it's taking a senior St. Mungo's Healer to undo it, whatever it was she did.

_Well._ Apparently Granger is about ten times more formidable than he'd given her credit for, and that's saying something. They're not talking about _Obliviate,_ but a hippogriff of another color entirely.

It's murky, but it sounds as if she won't get her parents back until after the trials—somehow they're being held hostage—and unwillingly he feels a twinge of fellow-feeling. He ruthlessly suppresses it; she's over at the Ministry looking at things that are _none of her bloody, fucking, Mudblood business._ If they paraded him down Diagon Alley stark naked he couldn't feel more helpless and mortified. It's the same thing, too, isn't it? She'll know everything—everything—about him and his family. It's none of her business. She doesn't even belong here. If the Dark Lord had won the war …

He reminds himself not to go down that path, because that way lies madness—not to mention things he'd rather not replay in his dreams tonight. Not that he has a choice, when those dreams take him.

He takes out his mother's letter and reads it once more, trying to contrive how to reassure her without telling her anything. She's asking him what's wrong, but Draco is quite sure that she doesn't want to know. There's nothing she can do about it, in any case.

Late in the afternoon, Longbottom arrives bearing two bottles of butterbeer and a box of sweets from Honeydukes. He puts it all down on the table and says, "Happy birthday, Draco," opens the bottles and hands him one, raising the other in a toast, "Many happy returns."

The sweets in the box are in fact his favorites. Longbottom must have a good intelligence network, he thinks. He forgets that he used to open his parcels from home in full view of the Great Hall to distribute the largesse to his clients in Slytherin.

"Thanks, Neville," he says. Longbottom tacitly assumes they're on a first-name basis, and he doesn't quite have the will to object.

Butterbeer is mild stuff, more sweet than intoxicating, but it warms him just enough. He doesn't forget that his mother and father are in Azkaban and that he's on house arrest himself, but for the moment he can pretend that he likes Longbottom. He takes a chocolate frog and pushes the box over to Longbottom. "Here, have something."

Longbottom smiles and takes the other chocolate frog.

Draco unwraps his own frog and then groans when he sees the card. Bloody _Dumbledore._

***

The night of his birthday is the worst yet. He paces, thinking about his mother's letter, to which he can compose no adequate reply. He's drafted it in his head over and over. He's frantic, wondering what pause or breath or turn of phrase in his previous missives betrayed him. If he knew what mistake he'd made, he could endeavor not to repeat it. He tries not to think about his father's letter, which on the face of it is easier to answer, but only because his father has less capacity to catch him out in evasions or even outright lies. _Has less capacity, in general. May be sliding into madness._ No, he does not want to think about that.

The Dementors have returned to Azkaban. He saw that in the _Prophet _weeks ago, and he has been trying not to think about it. It makes him too afraid.

He stares out the window at the twilit sky, and wishes he could take his racing broom out to the Quidditch pitch and just fly all night until he was exhausted. But Madam Pomfrey won't let him attempt it yet, not with the problems he's been having with ordinary magic.

It's past eleven o'clock, long past the Hogwarts curfew, when Longbottom stops in the doorway of his cubicle (his stall, his cell, his shrunken world) to ask if he's feeling all right.

Under ordinary circumstances, he would lie. He licks his lips and tries to shape them around the correct reply, but it doesn't come out right.

"No," he says. And then he's shocked to hear himself say, "I had a letter from my mother." He doesn't need to say, _a worrying letter._

"Are you going to be able to sleep?" Longbottom asks.

"I don't know." As soon as he says it, he feels all the terror he's spent the day suppressing. "I can't even sit still."

He's exhausted, but his thoughts are running around like terrified mice. Then Longbottom is guiding him to the bed, and sitting in the chair at the bedside, and stroking his hair—his poor, mutilated, hacked-off hair. He's terribly ashamed of the tears that start to trickle from under his closed lids. He opens his eyes and the vaulted ceiling of the hospital wing blurs overhead. He turns on his side and curls up, hugging his knees.

There's a warm hand on his shoulder. If he keeps his eyes closed, he can pretend it's his mother. He imagines that he is five years old, a very small boy marooned in a vast bed. He asks her if she would hold him.

She does. The embrace is large and careful and strong and warm, and it puts all of the frightening things at a safe remove—on the other side of the rampart of her arms—and all of the nice things inside the circle of her warmth, where he knows he is cherished. He relaxes into it, loosening his grip on one worry after another, until he slides into dream.

***

From his birthday to the second week of July, everything changes, and much for the better.

He hates, _hates_ the thought that he owes some of it to Granger, but there it is on the front page of the _Prophet. _Skeeter again, and he knows that Skeeter absolutely hates Granger's guts, if possible more than he ever did, and the article is meant both to embarrass her and to discredit the War Crimes Commission. There's a truly unflattering picture of Granger from the Order of Merlin awards ceremony, and then a paragraph or so quoting her outburst from the latest War Crimes Commission meeting, in which she said that imprisonment in Azkaban with Dementors in residence was barbaric and constituted a "human rights violation," whatever that is. She's on about _spew_ for humans, he conjectures.

The first shock is that she was seconded by her superior, Healer Derwent. Boudicca Derwent, Senior Healer at St. Mungo's Hospital. A Pureblood (he knows the name) and a direct descendent, in the maternal line, of _that_ Derwent. The further shock is that a week later, his parents have been released from Azkaban to house arrest at the Manor, and he's been moved from the Hogwarts hospital wing to a little cubbyhole of a room in what's being called the "apprentices' corridor," a warren of living quarters organized from two disused classrooms. The former House dormitories are housing war orphans, until such time as the school re-opens. The only actual apprentice in residence is Neville Longbottom, who has a bedroom and a study. On the other side of Neville's rooms (yes, he's Neville now) is another minuscule room on the same plan as his own little cell, that's occupied by Granger, who's living at Hogwarts now that she's been exiled from the Weasley enclave.

Minerva McGonagall is quite candid with him about his status. His presence at Hogwarts is a guarantee of his parents' good behavior. If they break their house arrest, he goes to Azkaban. If he leaves Hogwarts without authorization, they go to Azkaban. "We're hostages for each other," he says. She nods, and tells him that every effort will be expended to make his stay as little like formal internment as possible.

Apparently under orders from McGonagall and Pomfrey, Neville is teaching him how to get on without magic. It's terribly frustrating, like being five again. He's not used to doing without magic; he had his first wild magic at eighteen months and his parents reared him as a Pureblood wizard. He screams himself into hysteria when the tools don't work, and there are too many tools. He didn't take bloody Muggle Studies and he doesn't see why he should start now, and Neville bloody Longbottom is all too pleased to tell him how bloody clever the Muggles are, and that if he practices, he could manage living as a Muggle.

He doesn't _want_ to live as a bloody Muggle, thank you very much.

Flying still works, though. The day he's to go out flying for the first time after the attack is _almost_ spoiled when Granger shows up—walking straight into his quarters in the hospital wing—and he loses control and baits her with everything he knows damned well he shouldn't say. Then he's terrified to feel dangerous magic sparking between them—and from the look on her face, she feels it too—and fool that he is, he even reminds her of how she almost bloody fucking AK'd him after the mob attack.

Then she takes control and slows everything down and (in response to his own excruciatingly stupid question) she even tells him that she'd have interfered in the attack if she'd known it was him. She firmly tells him that she and he are not really enemies; they just don't like each other. She tells him that she knows how scared he was at the Manor when she was being tortured. She understands that he didn't actually enjoy watching that, in spite of his earlier noises about wanting to see her tortured and humiliated. This last evidence of her insight bothers him far less than he would expect.

And flying is _wonderful. _ It still works. Praise Merlin, it still works. Madam Pomfrey finally lets him out with his broom, under guard by two Aurors of course, and he flies for _hours. _Neville and Granger applaud when he lands in the middle of the Quidditch pitch. He doesn't even resent too much that they're sitting in the Gryffindor stands while they're doing it. He wants so badly to share it, to have this fun _with_ someone, that he tries (unsuccessfully) to bully Neville into flying with him. He even holds out his Nimbus 2001 to Granger and asks her if she'll have a go.

She declines—but with a smile.

And then there's the _other_ thing that still works. Without words, things have shifted between him and Neville. Certain things have become habit and ritual. Lovely, comforting things. There's the first-name thing. And then there's the hair-stroking thing. And being held as he's falling asleep.

One night, half asleep, he cuddles back into that warm, comforting embrace and suddenly he's quite clear that it's not his mother, because he feels Neville's erection pressing against his rump. Also, it's quite clear to Draco that he's not five years old, because he's curious and mildly excited, rather than puzzled, at this discovery. Then he feels Neville shift uncomfortably, trying to pull away from him without waking him up, and that's when he's definitely not half asleep any more.

At first, it's a game. _Oh, look, I got a reaction. Let's see how far I can push this._ He pretends to be even sleepier than he was, murmurs childishly, and wriggles against Neville as if trying to settle himself further. Neville goes very still, as if holding his breath, and gets harder.

The first time, Draco leaves it at that, and pretends to settle into sleep. He feels Neville carefully move away, trembling all over. He's gratified at having an effect. On the other hand, once Neville has left, Draco has to drop the pretense of sleep and do something about the situation, because Neville in turn has had an effect on _him._

Draco never has been able to resist an unstable equilibrium. Over the course of the next week or so, he does what comes naturally, which is to push the situation to crisis. He plays the same game several times more, and is gratified at how abashed Neville looks the next day, while he himself pretends to know nothing about what went on the night before.

Then one night, he's squirming and then grinding on Neville's lap, laughing to himself, _he's a fool if he thinks I'm still asleep. But he _is_ a fool, and I bet I've just convinced him he's a child molester into the bargain. _ Unexpectedly, Neville wraps an arm around his waist, pulls him close, and whispers, "You are not going to play games with me." And then there's a large warm hand stroking him _there_, and hot breath tickling against his ear, "or at least, we're both going to play."

This proves to be even more fun.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

***

In the third week of July, Granger unexpectedly takes him up on his offer to fly with her, after he spends fifteen minutes wheedling Neville to join him and then turns to her. She's disgracefully clumsy and nervous, keeps throttling back rather than surging forward—just _choking off_ the power that a fine racing broom can channel.

He laughs at her.

She loses her temper, spectacularly. When she lands, she throws the broom back at him. She tells him she's only doing this in the first place to humor Neville, who as he well knows _really_ can't stand flying, no small thanks to certain prats who tormented him in first-year flying class. Furthermore, she adds, she's had enough trouble from him and his, and they all can go to hell. Or bloody Azkaban, where his unforgivable parents would be rotting if she hadn't had an attack of principles. She's fed up with his attitude, and she is not a daughter of the bloody Pureblood aristocracy, so he can take it (the pedigree _and _the accompanying attitude) and shove it up his inbred arse. Along with his goddamned broom, if he so chooses. She concludes, with considerable feeling, "Fuck you very much, Mr. Malfoy, and good day."

He's so gobsmacked to hear language like that from her that he doesn't even call her on it. He just stands there in the middle of the pitch, holding the brooms and staring after her indignantly retreating back.

Ten paces further on she turns. "Some of us haven't had the benefit of private lessons since age three," she adds as a parting shot, "so you're just going to have to wait for somebody sufficiently aristocratic to show up."

He looks up at the Gryffindor stands to see Neville smirking at him—smirking nigh on to bursting. The bloody git is _enjoying_ the spectacle of Hermione Granger swearing a blue streak at him, _him,_ Draco Malfoy, distinguished scion of a line that's Pureblood back to the twelfth century, who should _not_ have to listen to language like that from anyone, much less a Mudblood—erm, Muggle-born—upstart, of no specific attainments except—

--except for that small business of the memory charms on her parents, except for being the chief of operations for the downfall of the Dark Lord, except for holding her own in a duel against Bellatrix Lestrange. And that wee bit of wandless Dark Magic, apparently spontaneous, that almost killed him. And being friends with Neville Longbottom. Old friends. Very good friends.

The kind of very old, very good friend that it might offend Neville very much if he were to affront. Which might in turn lead to Neville not playing with him tonight, or maybe any other night.

Much as he doesn't like it, he's going to have to apologize.

Feeling like a fool, he calls after Granger, "Wait!"

She turns. "Well?"

"Tell me what to do," he says.

She looks at him, a long considering glance. He wishes he knew what was passing through that bushy head, or maybe he doesn't, given the way she's narrowing her eyes. Finally she speaks, in a surprisingly reasonable tone given what she just shouted at him (_your unforgivable parents_ still stings, as does _shove it up your inbred arse_).

"If you're so clever, why don't you teach me how to do it right? Make me like it."

He has no difficulty in translating that. _I never had the benefit of the excellent education you had. Teach me what they taught you._ And he doesn't miss the little hook of flattery in it: _You're clever, and you could apply that cleverness to teaching me. _This is the girl who spent every free moment in the library. She's hungry. If he feeds her, maybe he'll get her on his side—or at least she won't devour him. Her father's resemblance to a lion isn't quite so amusing, now that he's been mauled by the lioness.

He thinks back to his very earliest lessons and what he learned then about the lore of the witch's broom. He puts on a lecturer's tone, which he figures ought to go over well with swotty Granger. "The first thing you have to understand about the witch's broom," he says, "is that it's a specialized wand. It channels the will to fly." At the risk of bringing up things best left to slumber in the past, he adds, "Remember first year, how your broom and Longbottom's didn't want to leave the ground? That's because _you_ didn't want to leave the ground."

He hands the Nimbus 2001 to her. "Here, take it. Now we're going to practice summoning the broom. No flying yet. Just summon it."

From the stalwart determination on her face, he can tell that this is just the right note. She likes things broken down into understandable pieces, and she definitely wants to know the theory. For an hour, they practice summoning the broom, and fine-tuning the intent. No wonder she had so much trouble with it. She's been terrified of the thing running away with her.

She tells him that nobody ever went over this part with her, and there's a tone of appreciation in her voice that's quite gratifying.

Her concentration is impressive; he's catching her enthusiasm and explaining things he didn't even remember being told. By the time they get to the first flying drill, which involves going straight up and then coming down at a not too terrifying angle, she's treating him with the same respect that she accorded McGonagall, and he's feeling a little less as if he's placating a surly hippogriff.

She takes criticism well, trying her best to adjust. Her hands are in the right position, her legs are just where they're supposed to be--except that the _posture_ is just wrong. She's holding herself too stiffly, braced so that everything from hips to neck is one solid, unbending piece. He tries to explain. "_Everything_ moves," he says. "That's how you adjust in flight."

She frowns and shakes her head. "I don't understand. Explain it again." A little bit of the lioness shows in her eyes. He knows that words aren't going to do it, because it's a matter of the body, and her body isn't understanding it.

"No, I'll _show_ you. You have to feel it," he says. He puts his broom aside and takes hers. He stands astride. "Get on behind me." They both have their feet on the ground, the broom floating gently beneath them. "Now try this." He places her hands so that her thumb is planted on the lower margin of his ribcage, her fingertips on his hip crest. "Now spread your fingers. I want you to pay attention to what I'm doing in flight. Pay attention to what you _feel_ me doing." She obeys, digging the fingers into his sides. "No, loosen your grip, Granger. I'm not going to let you fall. And we'll only be flying a few feet off the ground."

He feels her turn, and he turns with her. She's looking up to the stands, where Neville is sitting. He sees Neville nod in reassurance. Draco also sees that Neville is resting his closed right hand on his thigh, and that hand is holding his wand. The nod is for Granger, as well as for the Auror who sits nearby in a similar posture.

Then, ever so briefly, Neville's eyes meet his, and the meaning is unmistakable.

_If anything happens to her, you will regret it. Deeply. For as long as it takes me to dismember you, Muggle style._

He shivers a little. That's the face of Neville that he has no desire to encounter again.

On the first pass, he carefully flies as close to the ground as possible, so low that if he straightened his legs, his feet would drag the ground. Her fingers dig into his flesh so that he feels the nails. "No, relax, Granger," he says. "_Please._ Gentle pressure. If you're not relaxed, you won't be able to feel what I'm doing." Finally she relents, and eventually he can feel her following his intent; he feels the changes in pressure as she shifts her attention from his ribs to his hips to what he's doing with the muscles of his torso. They fly a very slow circuit of the Quidditch pitch, at walking pace.

When they come back to the starting point, he lets his feet touch the ground; behind him, he feels her weight shift from the broom onto her legs. He takes the handle of the broom and turns to give it to her. "Now fly the drill again. Just once, so I can see what you're doing."

The improvement is amazing; she's adjusting in flight with control and grace. When she lands, she's beaming. She understands now.

"Better," he says.

Now that she understands how to improve, she's implacable. They drill over and over again, flying tandem and then solo, as the sun drops below the mountains, as the air chills and the last of the glow in the west fades to blue. At the end, the only light he can see is from the two wand-tips in the stands; Neville and the Auror have cast _Lumos_ to light them on their way. He's shivering a little in his thin summer robes.

"Absolutely the last time," she says, as they launch on the final circuit. He realizes that she's barely touching him; the signals she's following now are extremely subtle, and her confidence has improved dramatically. She trusts herself now. And she trusts him. He doesn't think _Granger,_ only _she. _ It's much easier that way, and he _likes _those intelligent fingertips touching him, following the way he's thinking with his center of mass. He doesn't want to spoil it thinking about those other things.

Very intelligent hands. She has an amazing touch. He'd thought she lived entirely in her head, and here she is following him—remarkably quickly too—and suddenly he's aware that she's _touching_ him. Touching his bare skin, through his robes. And she _knows_ it's bare skin.

They come to the end of the circuit, settle their feet to the ground, and he summons the broom to his hand. She doesn't break the contact between her fingertips and his waist, but now it shifts, as her fingertips move on his skin. She's feeling him through his robe, inquisitively, her touch just short of a caress—a touch that lasts mere seconds, before she drops her hands. He finds he's holding his breath, not sure if he dreads more the end or the continuation of her exploration. He definitely felt the intent, and it wasn't her infamous scientific curiosity. It was something else entirely.

"So, Granger, you utter perv, is it flying you like or is it me?" He meant to be joking, but it comes out as a silky bedroom purr. He's grateful for the darkness and the loose drape of his robes.

Her voice actually sounds shaken. "Malfoy, this surprises me no end, but it's both, actually." There's a little pause, in which he can almost _feel_ her thinking about how to modify that. Then she says, "I would never have suspected you of patience. Still less of having any desire to teach."

He asks, "Then you wouldn't find it intolerable to fly with me again?" He hates himself for the tone of pleading in that. He pulls himself together and explains, "You're far less inept than Longbottom. Some days I can't believe he's a pureblood wizard. But with some work, _you_ could pass for a proper witch." He adds, "Mud—I mean Muggle-born or not."

She replies, in something more like her ordinary tone. "I'll take you up on your offer, if you promise not to nag Neville to fly."

"Next week, then," he says, trying to sound crisp and sensible in spite of the fact he's just gotten hard over _Granger_. He hopes that Neville is inclined to reward him for his good behavior—and sooner would be better than later.

***

Ever since the attack, Draco eats his meals in seclusion, in his rooms. Neville has made some sort of arrangement with the Hogwarts house-elves, since Draco's presence in the Great Hall is apparently reckoned a provocation to the elements that assaulted him in the first place. That's fine; he'd rather not face those little hooligans again. Neville eats dinner in the Great Hall with the students. That's what he calls them, although they're actually a rabble of former Hogwarts students and Muggle-born war orphans. The division into houses has blurred; Neville says there's considerable mixing among the tables.

In the fourth week of July, a week after the first flying lesson, Neville and Granger come to visit him in his rooms after dinner. Neville comes in first, beaming at him in the way that promises something very nice for the evening. Granger comes in, a little behind Neville, looking surly and distracted and plainly scouting for an inconspicuous place to sit. She has the look of someone who's thinking very hard about something that's about a thousand miles away.

He decides to get this off on the right foot. He asks, "So, Granger, how was practice?"

She's puzzled. "What practice?"

He can't believe she's forgotten. He's already been planning the next lesson. He glowers at her and drawls, "Granger, it's a complete waste of time to tutor you if you're not going to practice."

She says, "I don't have a broom."

"You don't have a _broom?_" This is beyond belief. How can someone so insistent on being a real, live, actual witch not have her own broom?

He gets up off the bed, goes to the corner where his two brooms are standing, selects the Nimbus 2001, walks straight up to her and shoves the handle into her hand.

She pushes it back at him. "I can't take this."

He wraps her fingers around the handle. "Yes, you can. You don't have a broom. This is a broom." And she's bloody well going to take it, and she's going to practice, because this flying lessons thing is scoring fabulous dividends for him with Neville, and he'll be damned if she scotches it. And he's not going to _go through the motions_ of teaching her; that would be too bloody frustrating.

"But it's yours."

What kind of idiocy is this? Does she think him incapable of sharing his toys? And what is he going to do with two brooms, anyway?

"Yes, on loan to you, Granger. You don't have a broom. I have two. Do the arithmetic. Now you don't have the excuse of no broom, so I don't want to hear it next week."

Good. He's sounding like the stern teacher, not the trembling boy who got a hard-on from her touching him in the dark. And given her fabulous progress last time, they won't have to do that drill again. She'll be flying on her own from here on out.

He looks at her. "Seven a.m. on the Quidditch pitch."

***

Things are going swimmingly as July comes to a close—well, except for bloody Muggle studies. Not studying Muggles, Draco thinks with a scowl, but studying how to be a Muggle. He hates it. He's not a Muggle. Not a Squib, either, thank you. He's a wizard. Pureblood. Back to the twelfth century in the Malfoy line, and even further in the Black line. He keeps his temper with huge difficulty, by gritting his teeth and reciting his family tree under his breath, starting with himself and working backward. Usually by the time he reaches the eighteenth century, he's calmed down enough to concentrate on whatever inanity Neville is trying to shove down his throat that day.

When he complains about the uneven hem and crooked shoulder yoke on what were formerly his best school robes, Neville tells him that was Granger's quick _Reparo_ done on the battlefield; those are the robes that the mob had half torn off him. "She wasn't going to stop and do fine tailoring when you were bleeding all over the floor," Neville says. "On the other hand, this is an excellent opportunity for a lesson." He picks up the robes off the bureau, waves his wand, and the seams drop open.

Draco can't suppress a squeak of indignation.

Neville hands him a needle, a thimble, scissors, and a spool of thread. "You'll put them back together again, Muggle style," he says, with a big smile. He says, "Don't worry, I'll show you. I'm actually quite good at this, you know."

Draco narrows his eyes, in lieu of retailing all of the things that Neville fails to be good at. Fails miserably.

On the other hand, to compensate for that, there _are_ things Neville is good at. Very good. Deliciously good. Draco must admit that he's been well rewarded for being nice to Granger.

Well. This distracts him from the task at hand nearly as much as the indignant internal monologue about how he's not a Muggle, but it's a great deal more pleasant.

Neville taps him on the shoulder, because apparently he's been staring into space with an expression of vacant good will. A silly lopsided smile,which is quite adorable, but there's a lesson to attend.

Draco pulls himself together and applies his attention to the threading of a needle. _Reparo_ is ever so much easier (if he could but do it), but this has its points. And Neville goes all Slytherin on him and tells him that Granger is absolute _pants_ at this, couldn't sew a straight line to save her life.

"Her _Reparo's_ not so great either," Draco says, feeling much more cheerful even as he knows he's being manipulated. Not that his father would give him any points for trouncing Granger in this arena, but it gives him satisfaction nonetheless.

***

The lessons in Muggle living don't actually take up that much time. Most of Neville's time during the day is taken up with his duties as an apprentice to Professor Sprout, in working with the students, or assisting with the last of the repair work to the castle.

Neville assigns him homework, of course. The repair of the school robes is one such assignment. Actually, once he settles into it, Draco finds it surprisingly relaxing. Concentrating on making tiny, even stitches and getting just the right tension in the thread puts him in a meditative state, in which the rest of his mind can work on other problems. He's taken up reading Potions again, thinking about the NEWTs, and he's unpacked the rest of his textbooks as well. There are some courses he can't prepare too well in his current state; Defense would be one, Transfiguration another. Theory classes like Arithmancy and Astronomy aren't a problem, of course, because he has ample leisure in which to read.

And for the practical magic classes, he can at least memorize wand movements.

The flying lessons turn out to be a blessing in another way. The Aurors are not particularly helpful about standing guard on him when he's flying by himself, but if one of the Heroes of the Battle of Hogwarts is with him, that's another affair entirely. He feels as if he has two layers of bodyguards, the grudging Aurors who are there to prevent assassination, kidnap or escape; and then Neville and Granger, who guard him from insult. There are days he wakes up and shakes his head at how it's turned out.

And Granger _knows._ In the second flying lesson, he decided to do some fancy flying over the lake by way of exhibition. He stupidly snagged his foot on something when skimming the lake surface, and did a header into the muddy shallows. She whipped out her wand, cast a flurry of charms, and had him Scourgified, dried and warmed in a trice. Then she said something affectedly casual about how she'd seen that he didn't have his wand and that he'd been looking uncomfortable. Granger is the least skillful liar he knows. She bloody well knows he's having trouble with magic, and she's being as kind and diplomatic about it as she can. This kindness galls him because there's already too much that she knows.

There's something odd about her flying, which he notices after the third lesson. Her progress has been shockingly fast, and there are peculiar little things about the way she flies, as if she's acquired some of his own particular tricks and mannerisms. He knows he didn't teach her those details. It's not stuff that anyone _teaches_. Sometimes, watching her fly, he feels as if he's watching himself in a mirror. He's never seen anyone follow their teacher quite that closely. Even for _Granger,_ it's odd. Spooky. Uncanny. He never thought he'd be using those words of a Muggle-born.

***

At the end of July, he notices one more thing about Granger that's distinctly disquieting.

She looks really fetching in Muggle clothes.

Merlin save him from such a thought, but he was there in Neville's rooms when the two of them were arguing about what to wear to Potter's birthday party, and she was standing there in black jeans and a purple tank top—that's what it's called—a clinging shirt with a deeply scooped neck and no sleeves, that looks like an undergarment. Puzzlingly, it was plainly a Muggle garment, but it bore the legend "Defending Against the Dark Arts Since 1149." She was holding out her periwinkle dress robes and he could see the delicately delineated muscles in her bare arms, and the rosy-golden color dusting their upper surface, and he couldn't help staring at her breasts in that shirt. He'd never even thought about Granger having a body, and here she looks like a mermaid rising out of the sea, with all that wild hair foaming over her shoulders and the gorgeous line of her shoulders and arms and bust. And he can follow the shape of her hips and legs in the black jeans that make her lower half the featureless but elegant shadow of a woman.

And her manner is different in those clothes, too. He'd almost swear she's flirting with Neville.

There's something in Neville's tone, too, when he says to Granger that if she didn't already have an invitation, he'd invite her to come along as his guest. A kind of wistfulness, as if he's half expressing a wish so long deferred that it's almost stopped hurting him. Draco feels pierced to the heart. What if Neville has been carrying a torch for Granger all these years? Not a thought previously on his horizon, because it never crossed his mind to wonder whom Neville might fancy, but now—seeing her and hearing him—it's not inconceivable. In the mirror-world of Gryffindor House, well in Gryffindor according to Neville Longbottom, she may well have been something special. She was always taking up for him, like a bloody Amazon warrior.

And not that he'd ever have wanted in, but now it hurts to be shut out of their world. His world is dead; all his friends are gone. Neville and Granger are going to a party at the Weasley compound, where he'd be about as popular as the bubonic plague. _But they're going to a party, and he's not invited._ For the briefest of moments, he wants to cry, until he sees the flash of pity on Granger's face. He reminds himself of who he is and who _they_ are. He doesn't need them. His pedigree alone places him in the social empyrean. Absolutely. In time and in eternity.

His father is Lucius Malfoy, whose father was Abraxas Malfoy, whose father in turn was Apollonius Paracelsus Malfoy,…

"Give my regards to Potty and the Weasel," he says, pushing his bare feet into his slippers. He closes his Potions book, stands up and sweeps out of the room with what he hopes is appropriately haughty flair.

***

There are more disquieting hints after Potter's birthday party.

Neville comes home bearing gifts. His birthday is the day before Potter's, and two of the company remembered the occasion, Granger and that strange Lovegood girl.

Lovegood's gift to Neville is a drawing, _Mistletoe with Nargles._ He's not sure what Nargles are, but Neville shows him how to look at the drawing so that something wriggling and attenuated shows up in his peripheral vision. It's creepy. And he doesn't like thinking about Lovegood, because she was a prisoner at the Manor for months, and that reminds him of things he doesn't want to think about, such as the War Crimes Commission whose deliberations have been underway all this time. Granger _knows,_ and sometimes he catches her looking at him as if he's something she's never seen before and isn't sure she wants to see again. His name has to be on a list over there. There are too many people who know what he's done, and there's always guilt by association. Bellatrix Lestrange was his glamorous aunt, but to others she was a Death Eater, a torturer and a murderer.

Among her many victims were Neville's parents. And he'd _really_ rather not think about that.

The gift that Granger gave to Neville disturbs him in a different way. Neville is delighted with it; every time he even looks at it, he's beaming. It's a book, of course—does Granger know no other manner of gift?—and a Muggle book at that, but even across the barrier between the worlds, Draco recognizes _expensive_ and even _extravagant._ Neville sees him looking at it and happily shows it; the tome is as large as a medieval spell book and as lavishly illustrated, but of course it's about plants. Of course. With what is Neville Longbottom completely obsessed if not _plants?_ Scary magical plants (sometimes Draco thinks of him as the Hagrid of the greenhouses, because he's never heard anyone else _cooing_ to a Venomous Tentacula) but ordinary plants too.

The book is gorgeous. Even if it is a Muggle artifact.

And Neville loves it.

And Granger spent quite a bit of money on it, because Neville keeps repeating that it's extravagant, and he certainly knows ways and means in the Muggle world. (Neville is the most Mugglish wizard he knows, possibly even exceeding Potter.)

And Granger was flirting with Neville before they left for the party. He's almost certain of that now. And those clothes… but he won't think about that, because he does _not_ feel any attraction to Muggle-borns wearing Muggle clothes.

He doesn't like the way this is adding up. She might well be courting Neville.

In which case he would not stand a chance. "Order of Merlin, First Class" trumps "unsuccessful junior Death Eater" as a desirable consort. Irrevocably. Not even counting in the slight disadvantage of the same-sex consort in Pureblood circles (it's slighter than in the Muggle world, he understands). And he doesn't dress in that crass, obvious, _fetching_ Muggle way. Not that Neville would look at him any differently if he did, because Neville already knows everything about him that there is to be known. Neville's interest in Draco's clothes extends mostly to removing them; he neither dispenses nor heeds fashion advice.

Draco isn't about to give up, because he's not out of the game yet. There is no way that he is going to resign _any_ competition to a mere Mudblood—no, Muggle-born. (Really, he has to be careful with that word.) He does have something Neville might fancy. It's of no use to him any more, since his hair doesn't yet reach his shoulders. With admirable delicacy, Neville has trimmed it so he's no longer reminded of the assault by the sight of the brutally hacked-off ends.

He's as casual as he can be, when he presents Neville with the onyx and silver hair clasp (fourteenth century, wizard-made but of such fine craftsmanship it's often taken for Goblin-made). He says that Neville observed his birthday with a gift, so it is only proper that he return the courtesy. And since Neville is wearing his hair long in Pureblood style, he should do it properly, rather than tying it back with a rag.

Neville accepts the clasp, looking at it in wonder, and then regards him for a long moment.

"This isn't a chocolate frog," he says.

"No," Draco says. "A chocolate frog is of absolutely no use for keeping your hair in order."

***


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:** I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

***

It's August already, and no one knows if Hogwarts will be re-opening in the fall as a school. It's looking less and less likely, given the number of war orphans. Nonetheless, Draco is studying for NEWTs. It gives him something to do with the empty hours, and it supplies matter for his letters to his parents. The study accomplished in a day will fill a paragraph or two. He can't very well tell them about his "life without magic" lessons with Neville (or, Merlin forbid, what _else_ he does with Neville), nor has his family ever corresponded at length about the weather—well, except for his mother, and that's only in connection with her roses.

Now that his parents are back at the Manor, he gets regular news about the roses and the peacocks. It's the only thing about which his parents disagree. They had _differing opinions_ on a number of questions, but his mother always prevailed. His father wanted him to go to Durmstrang, because of its solid Pureblood traditions and its more adventurous Dark Arts curriculum; his mother wanted him closer to home. He's not sure what name his father had picked out for him, but he knows that the Blacks name their children after constellations. He still remembers the starry night on which his mother first showed him the dragon circling the pole.

His mother and father love each other to distraction, in a quiet, icy, understated way.

However, the peacocks eat the roses.

They eat other flowers, too, but the roses are a sore point with his mother. She takes such trouble with them.

Into the bargain, the peacocks are noisy and aggressive. During the Dark Lord's stay at the Manor, Draco heard enough of Yaxley's snide remarks about how they were pale and vain and obnoxious, just like master of the house, and like him, _all show._ He hated that.

He knows that his father is _not_ as annoying as those white birds. He's of his mother's opinion about the peacocks because he's always found their loud cries unnerving. But out of loyalty to his father, he has never said so.

In response to her anxious inquiries, he is able to assure his mother that he is eating well. Neville makes sure of that; feeding is a very important feature of his style of affection. That's why he has suspicions about Neville's feelings toward Granger, because every time he sees the two together, Neville is offering her something to eat. She does look rather thin, which is puzzling because he knows she's eating meals at Hogwarts.

He tells his mother that he's sleeping well, because he is, especially after he and Neville have spent the evening together, and especially if he falls asleep in Neville's arms.

He doesn't tell her about the nightmares that wake him up halfway through the night, and that are getting more vivid all the time. The snake, Nagini, the Dark Lord's snake, and then Greyback leering at him, and the screaming victims. Or worse, the ones who didn't scream, like the Muggle Studies teacher with her slowly trickling tears, killed by the Dark Lord and eaten by Nagini on the table in the formal dining room. And, of course, the terrible white visage and red eyes of the Dark Lord himself, and his high hissing voice.

The thing that calms him most about Neville's arms around him is that those are the arms that killed Nagini. He remembers what he didn't in fact witness: those arms wielding the Sword of Gryffindor in a double-handed grip and striking off the head of the snake. When he wakes from nightmare in the circle of those arms, he knows he's safe.

He writes to his father about what he's studying for NEWTs, and describes the flying drills he is doing weekly. He even says that he's tutoring someone in flying, but he does not name his student. His father told him to watch the weather because it was changing. He's taking that as general advice, just like the previously ignored advice about how little it served his purposes to be at odds with Potter. (Father was right about that.) He isn't sure that the weather has changed enough that his father would be pleased about him keeping company with a Muggle-born, and in particular with Granger.

He wonders if his father took Granger's existence as a personal reproach for not producing a sufficiently _superior_ son. Draco was supposed to carry all before him, Head Boy and Quidditch Captain and winner of the House Cup for Slytherin, and that wasn't going to happen when he was in the same year with Potter and Granger. It certainly isn't going to happen now.

On the other hand, things are different between him and his father. He remembers his father embracing him, before the Aurors took him away, without any regard for what spectators might think. The terrible tenderness of that gesture told him that his father would sacrifice anything for him, be it honor or even life.

It isn't fair that he has his father's love only now that they are separated, perhaps forever.

He remembers what his father told him as he was setting off for Hogwarts that first year: "Don't forget that you are a Malfoy." The tone implied some doubt that he would remember.

He wonders what injunction Granger's parents gave her before putting her on the Hogwarts Express, because those words seem to have launched her like a rocket. And they're _Muggles._ They're not supposed to command words of power. In spite of the theories he's heard that all Muggle-borns are actually half-blood bastards, he knows that Granger's father is really her father, because she's the very image of him—like him, leonine with wild hair—and sharp-eyed like her sphinx of a mother. No wonder she's so compulsively law-abiding; he'd be too, if he'd grown up with those eyes following him. No, without having magic at all, it's clear that Granger's parents are persons of power.

He doesn't remember when he started feeling curious about them.

He finishes the letter to his father with some hopeful words about the prospect of good weekend weather for flying, signs it, rolls it, and seals it with his signet ring.

There's not a word in either of those letters about the War Crimes Commission, nor their impending fates, nor the Recording Angel who lives two doors down in the apprentices' corridor.

***

Draco wakes past four in the morning from a dream of the battle, and he's sobbing, and for obvious reasons he can't tell Neville that the one he's mourning is Bellatrix.

Neville is lying awake next to him and knows immediately that it was a bad dream. Asks what frightened him. Draco lies. He says he can't remember the dream, only that he feels unutterably sad.

In the dream, he was looking frantically for his aunt Bella through the crossfire in the Great Hall. He knows that isn't how it happened. By that time, it was him and his father and his mother alone on their own side, between two enemy camps, and Bella likely would have killed him had he found her. As it was, he did see Granger and Lovegood and Ginny Weasley all dueling her, and he saw Molly Weasley strike her down. He saw it. She's dead, and past caring, wherever she is. And he misses her bitterly.

He sits up abruptly, because the tears are clogging his nose and he can't breathe.

Neville suggests that if they can't sleep, they can get up and look at the moon. Draco's little cell and Granger's are both windowless closets, but Neville's study has a window. They sit on the cool stone floor in the slanted rectangle of moonlight and look up through the panes.

It's quiet, and cool, and companionable. Draco is feeling almost calm enough to go back to bed when the screams begin. At first he isn't sure what he heard, and then it's more than clear: a woman's screams, great horrified whoops, with barely a breath between them. Neville is on his feet, his dressing gown loose around him and his wand in his hand, and then they're both out in the corridor because Neville has realized that it's coming from Granger's room. He pounds on the door, and is just about to do _Alomohora _ when Granger opens the door and stares at him with bleary eyes and mumbles something about the snake.

She blinks, and then says, "But you killed it."

Neville replies, "That doesn't stop my nightmares."

Apparently she had a nightmare and screamed herself awake. Draco pulls his dressing gown tight around him, less from exaggerated modesty than from a sense of chill that penetrates to the bone. He's trying to remember when she would have seen the snake. That's _his_ nightmare. And it bothers him beyond words to hear that Neville dreams about it too.

She apologizes again for waking them, and closes the door.

Neville said it was good; at least she hadn't set fire to anything. That gets Draco's attention. He doesn't want to hear _anything_ about setting fires.

Then the meaning of Neville's remark settles on him, and the hairs go up on the back of his neck: wild magic. Wild, flaring, primitive power. Next door to him. Or two doors down, when he's sleeping in his own bed. _She does wild magic in her sleep. _ He wonders if she dreams the Killing Curse, and what would happen if she did.

He has noticed that her cat is sleeping in Neville's room now.

He looks questioningly at Neville. "What's wrong with her?"

Neville shrugs. "Post-traumatic stress."

Draco says, "Oh, Muggle stuff."

Neville looks at him sharply. "No, _human_ stuff. Nightmares, flashbacks, mood swings. Bad temper, crying jags. And for the likes of us, sometimes, problems with magic. Sound familiar?"

He nods, feeling put upon. No doubt it's very bad form, but he's intensely jealous of the _problems with magic _that Granger is having. Wild magic is ever so much sexier than borderline Squibhood.

***

The full moon in August brings a werewolf attack in Hogsmeade, from the packs originally organized by Fenrir Greyback. The casualties from this attack are lower than the one last month, but that's because this time, most of the population of Hogsmeade sheltered inside the castle during the full-moon curfew. One or two families stayed behind, and one of them was wiped out entirely. He learns this from the _Daily Prophet, _and he sees Granger wince at the headline and mutter, "Yes, I saw it." He doesn't want to know more. He's always been terrified of werewolves; they figured in his earliest childhood nightmares, and Greyback didn't help matters.

Greyback was exceptionally terrifying, even for a werewolf. Draco doesn't ever again want to be looked at like that, as if he were particularly delicious and intriguing prey.

He can't believe he had a renegade cousin who actually _married_ one. And that her husband was that ragged and colorless fellow who taught Defense Against the Dark Arts in third year. "Remus Lupin" and "werewolf" didn't really fit in the same picture; he never would have guessed, if Snape hadn't outed him. He'd jeered at Lupin because the man was shabby and gentle and obviously poor, but he remembers with some guilt how authoritative and kind he was in the lesson with the Boggart. Draco didn't have the faintest idea then of the worth of anyone's kindness.

The face of his worst fear then was his father's coldest, most rejecting sneer. He knows he doesn't want to meet a Boggart now.

After the full-moon curfew, Neville and Granger go away for the weekend, on invitation of Neville's Gran to her place in Lancashire. Late on Sunday afternoon, they come back full of energy and good cheer, and Sunday night, Granger brings the Nimbus 2001 for inspection because in her opinion and Neville's, it doesn't look quite right. That would be an understatement. She had to have been doing something reckless with it, the details of which he isn't sure he wants to know. He pulls out the broom servicing kit and resets the angle on all of the tail twigs, questioning Granger as he works and she hovers in the doorway like a guilty phantom. All he manages to extract is that she was flying very fast, in the dark, in a Muggle district, following someone who apparently left her toiling in the dust.

He tells her sternly that if she does it again, he'll have to teach her to service the thing herself.

***

Near the end of August, he's permitted to go to Hogsmeade for the first time since Pansy and Greg and Blaise were killed. It's an unqualified disaster.

Neville invited him, quite casually, since he and Granger were going to the village anyway. The two Aurors accompanied them. Already he felt conspicuous; the people who weren't staring at his all too recognizable face were staring at the escorts in scarlet robes. None of the looks were friendly. He saw eyes narrow on him and he saw mouths work as if they wanted to spit. Not a third of the way down the High Street he was already wishing he had declined the invitation.

Then there was the incident at the Three Broomsticks. Neville poked his head in there to look for Professor Sprout, and necessarily Draco drifted in his wake, and Granger and the bloody Aurors after him.

Madam Rosmerta was behind the bar. When she spotted him from across the room, a very unpleasant thing happened to her face.

He'd always admired her rosy-gold coloring, florid good looks, and abundant figure, even if the excess of color and the baroque style of her beauty were somewhat vulgar, but now he saw that color drop from her face. It went chalk-white, as her usually smiling mouth flattened into a slit. Her eyes went hard and dead and hostile, like something from the dark side of the moon. She put down the glass she had been cleaning and walked straight across the front room of the pub toward him; had there been any intervening obstacle, it would have given way before her like smoke.

She stared at him and said to Granger and Neville, "We don't serve Death Eaters here. You're welcome here, but _that_ is not."

And Granger went just as dead-white as Rosmerta. She gave Draco a discreet but unceremonious shove toward Neville and hissed, "Get him out of here. I need to talk to her."

They waited outside the pub, Neville with head in hands, muttering under his breath, "Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck," which was already disturbing because Neville didn't ordinarily indulge in profanity. After twenty minutes or so, Granger re-emerged, shoving something back into her pocket.

Her first words were a reproach. "Neville, how could you? That poor woman."

Neville, on the verge of tears, said, "I'm sorry, I forgot. I _forgot._ I'm bloody _stupid._ Is she all right?"

"It took a bit of talking, but yes, I think." She took a deep breath and exhaled it shakily. "Lucky that Derwent taught me what to say, and gave me those leaflets. She told me to refer anybody I met who said they'd been under Imperius." She said to Neville, pointedly excluding Draco, "It's making me grateful I only got Cruciatus. Imperius is another neighborhood of hell entirely."

He remembers that he put Rosmerta under Imperius for his first abortive attempts on Dumbledore's life. A year ago, he would have shrugged—it was _only_ Imperius, after all. It's not as if he'd killed or tortured someone. And he'd forgotten, too, because she was just a piece on the board, a means to the end, and he'd been thinking only of the threat hanging over him—kill the Headmaster, or be killed along with his mother. Imperius was necessary to make her put the poison in the mead and pass the cursed necklace to Katie Bell.

But Imperius is one of the Unforgivables, carrying a mandatory life sentence in Azkaban. He just hadn't thought that applied to him. Rules had been for other people, lesser folk. Not for the Malfoys.

And it _had_ been only Imperius.

Granger is still talking, "I can't imagine what it's like to have done something horrible and not be able to stop doing it. To know the whole time that someone else was running my will. You don't forget what you did, and you can't undo it. No wonder Pius Thicknesse committed suicide."

Draco had seen the headline about the former Minister for Magic, but he'd assumed—what had he assumed? That Thicknesse didn't want to stand trial because he knew he was going to Azkaban. Even though he'd been under Imperius the whole time—well, he hadn't understood, because his father had gotten off similar charges after the First War with Voldemort, by pleading that he'd been under Imperius.

Except that Thicknesse really _had _been under Imperius.

And Cruciatus. Don't forget that. Even if it had been under threat from the Dark Lord and his aunt Bella, he had cast that curse on the hapless Rowle and Dolohov. And he hadn't been under Imperius when he was doing that, so in the eyes of the world he's fully responsible.

He's going to Azkaban. He was on the losing side, and he cast Unforgivables. He counts the times he's cast the Unforgivable Curses, leaving aside the unsuccessful attempts. Two or three times over he's going to Azkaban for life, except he has only one life.

They continued up the High Street. Neville wanted to go to Honeydukes to buy sweets for the children who had no pocket money. Neither he nor Granger alluded to what had happened at the Three Broomsticks; Neville struck up an inconsequential conversation with him about Every Flavor Beans and the gamblers' reasoning of eleven-year-old boys trying to decide if the nice flavors were worth the risk of the nasty ones. Draco responded with witty patter, and felt cheered a bit by his own efforts to be funny and by Neville's laughter.

Granger stalked in front of them in stony silence and stopped in front of the window of Honeydukes, staring at a display of sugar quills and quite visibly _thinking._ Draco was never so aware of cogitation as a _bodily function_, as when he was watching Granger's all-too-intelligent back. The back that was turned when the Dementors appeared.

The sun is still shining, but all of the warmth goes out of the world as he turns in slow motion to face the ranks of swaying figures, their cloaks drifting in the icy wind that blows straight from the ninth circle of hell, bringing with it a stench of decay off the deep ice. The shadow of each cowl hides a face that isn't a face, but a slimy scabbed blank split by a mouth that gapes onto nothingness…

In the core of the ice is fire, and he's standing once more at the top of the funeral pyre in the Room of Hidden Things, Fiendfyre beasts roaring around him, vultures and snakes and his namesake dragon, except he's no dragon, is he? Certainly no salamander; he shrinks from fire, and now it's whirling around him, laughing, as those Muggle mobs must have laughed as they danced around the flaming pile that was the first Manor. Poor Goyle is going to die, too, and all for having followed him. No rescue in sight, and the flames are closing in for the kill; he can feel the heat rising up through the pile, and there's a dreadful shift as the deep structure of the mountain of junk begins to subside. Not even to die on a high place like a pagan sacrifice, but to collapse into ignominious burial-alive in a heap of burning rubble… nonetheless, either way, to die screaming like the worthless coward he is.

No rescue in sight, even though a tiny remnant of rational mind remembers the rescue, remembers that the story didn't end in fire. And then he drops down another layer, and there's Greyback leering over him, extending a hairy hand and nicking Draco's robes with his claw, just a tiny slit, but it goes through two layers of silk and just grazes his left nipple… how had he forgotten that? and what Greyback said, in that horrible rasping voice with the wet catch in it on certain consonants: _delicious, tender, the soft skin, the sweet untouched secret places._

Drops down another layer and he's casting Cruciatus and the faces of the tortured howl below him and the Dark Lord hisses above him and he's sure he's going to disgrace himself, he's going to piss himself right there…

On the Astronomy Tower, pointing his wand at Dumbledore and his hand won't stop shaking and his voice is wobbling and he can't even summon the hatred that's necessary for the Killing Curse, and that one you can't fake, no switching fear for hatred; _Avada_ requires true animus and he can't summon it even though the old man's gentle voice is unwinding layers of humiliation: his terror for his mother and himself; his terrible confusion and ambivalence about killing in the first place; his remorse for the near-deaths of Katie Bell, whom he doesn't even know, and for Ron Weasley, whom he hates but didn't mean to kill…

Down another layer.

Trampled by Potter's friends on the train after being hexed into a raw quivering heap, something like a skinless slug...

Something jerks his elbow, and miles above him, a desperately annoying voice says, "Get behind me!"

An iron hook or claw grabs his upper arm above the elbow joint and swings him, loose bones and collapsing flesh—he's already dead and rotting—until he hits something hard and feels the breath knocked out of him. Drops to the ground, though it won't be ground for long; there are hells below this one. He must be alive if he still has breath. He must be dead because he's rotting and shot through with putrefaction, so rotten even the worms won't touch him.

The voice is relentless, up there in the world of the living. "And stay there. I'll sort this."

Drops down another layer, and he's a tiny, quivering creature slammed into the stone floor over and over again, and then coming back to himself, face burning and wet with tears, to the laughter of his worst enemies—except for the Mudblood, who's looking at him with pity (and that's even worse, in its way). He can't even get up properly; his joints are in agony and won't support him, so he crawls three or four paces before he can gather himself to stand… except in this looping nightmare he's crawling forever in front of the ones who hate him, who are laughing at him…

And then, inexplicably, the shuddering descent halts, and the icy despair recedes, and the sun warms him again, though he's left with the after-slime, the clammy certainty of his own worthlessness, clinging like lake mud.

On his right and on his left, someone is trying to lift him by the arms. Inexplicably, someone with four arms and two voices.

The darkness persists behind his closed eyes, because his own palms are shielding them. He's vaguely reassured that he still has a face. He's coming back to himself and he can felt the bones of the forehead and the zygomatic arch, the knobbed ends of the metacarpals, palm touching face, forehead and cheekbones. Bones, and flesh holding them together, so he isn't dead and rotted.

He tries to talk, and all that will emerge is wobbling jabber, teeth rattling against each other, everything shivering and trembling.

"Don't worry about talking," says a voice with a broad northern accent, vulgar but infinitely gentle.

"Mobilicorpus?" asks the other voice, the higher-pitched—annoying, but reassuringly competent.

"No, I think he can walk." Two arms, a man's arm and a woman's, link around his waist, embracing each other with him as the middle term.

"Back to the castle, quick-march," says an unfamiliar voice miles away. "The Headmistress will want to talk to you. And like as not, the Minister as well."

***

"Rogue Dementors," says Granger's eternally explaining voice, in a whisper not meant for him. Neville's hand strokes down his back, one warm pass after another. A day ago, half a day ago, before Madam Rosmerta's anathema and the onslaught of the shadows, that touch would have inflamed him, made him so hot and silky-hard he wouldn't be able to breathe without trembling. Now he's curled around what little warmth is left in the world, body aching from the muscular effort of shivering himself warm, and can't imagine having energy to spare for desire.

The mattress shifts as someone sits down, inside the wall of his curved body, and he feels someone else's warmth on the other side of the empty air. Granger again. She speaks and this time it's meant for him. "It's all right. The Minister knows about this, and they can't get into Hogwarts."

The warmth on his shoulder must be her hand, because both of Neville's hands are engaged in stroking his back and warming him through his robes, as Neville's voice murmurs a litany of reassurances so warm and soft they must be false. Draco shivers around the core of ice, pulling his sleeves around him.

Fingers touch his lips now. "Madam Pomfrey left chocolate for you."

He clamps his jaw tighter, flattens upper lip against lower so they can't suck out his soul. He knows how it's done and he won't be fooled.

"Stroke his hair," Neville whispers. "That helps, sometimes."

The warmth next to him shifts, and he feels hands moving through his hair, one after another, matching the rhythm of the warmth sliding down his back. Someone casts a warming charm, and a soft layer of air caresses him. Involuntarily, he relaxes, as if naked in a bath of affection and solicitude—the kindness of strangers. After a while, he opens his mouth and lets them feed him little broken-off chunks of chocolate that melt smoky-sweet on his tongue as the last of the slime of self-contempt and terror washes away into the darkness.

***

He's had a taste of Azkaban and he knows it's his future. He knows too many who've been in that place: his father, his uncle Rodolphus and aunt Bellatrix. That chills him to the bone and gives him a frantic, hopeless energy. He can't settle on what to do, since his life is so short and it's going to end when he arrives in the grim fortress in the North Sea. The Dementors have returned. When he's turned over to their tender mercies, he will disintegrate, just as he did there in the High Street in Hogsmeade, collapsed against the front window of Honeydukes as he plummeted through layers of humiliation and terror toward the primal Worst Memory and the black hole that's always lurked inside him, against which he has shored up crumbling walls of public mask, into which he has shoveled his father's prestige, the dread name of the Dark Lord, the terror he could evoke in others, the tears of the little ones he bullied…

None of it, in the end, will matter. And he has nothing more to feed it, so it will eat him, and the Dementors will feast on the last flare of horror as his personality crumbles into madness. Unless the wizards' court sentences him to the Kiss, of course, but he suspects that won't be his fate, because it's too brief and in the end too merciful.

He's never wondered before, but where _does_ the soul go that's eaten by the Dementor's Kiss? Does it end in the no-place whence Vanished objects go, or does annihilation have many houses?

He resolves that he won't think about this, and then thinks about it all the time, as he's staring blankly at the pages of his Potions textbook, as he's waving his useless prop of a wand to memorize the movements for Transfiguration (the movements that no longer channel any magic through him), as he's chopping vegetables and pretending that they're Potions ingredients because Slughorn won't let him into the Potions classroom to practice with the real thing. Neville conjures bluebell flames in a dish and shows him how to sautee or simmer or roast the results of his chopping practice, and at least it comes to something because he can eat it. The part of his mind that isn't wearing Azkaban grey, the part that still calls itself Draco Malfoy, reminds him that this is work for house-elves. The part that has already donned prison garb, and therefore is grateful to be sitting in a sunny room at Hogwarts, savors both the food and his increasing skill in preparing it.

The task that he cannot master is laying a fire; the flames inspire terror in him, and the terror, blank confusion. Neville shows him how to do it, shows him over and over again, and he can't master it. He can't hold the match or the flaming brand or cigarette lighter long enough to touch it to the kindling. He drops it, screaming, and once, terrifyingly, sets his robes on fire and burns his hands batting out the flames. Neville heals the burns and then praises his presence of mind for not running, which would have fed the fire, and demonstrates how to drop and roll to extinguish such flames in future.

Of course, it's September and the evening chill isn't fearsome yet, and in any event, he can curl next to Neville, who radiates warmth that he can't distinguish from reassurance.

***


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:** I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

***

In mid-September, he learns the date for the sitting of the NEWTs and therefore the term of his remaining life. Neville slips and tells him that the war crimes trials begin directly after, and the date of the examinations is set to the last day of February so that the examiners who also sit on the Wizengamot will have time to complete their deliberations before the trials begin. Some time in March, Draco conjectures.

Oddly, this simplifies things. There is only so much time, and only so much he can do in that time.

He's already begun the task of preparing for the NEWTs, so he'll finish it. That will give him continued matter for letters to his parents. There are a few other topics; he's begun to ask his father questions about how best to teach certain fine points of flying, and he tells his mother stories from the greenhouses.

He'll finish Hogwarts before he begins prison. That satisfies his sense of order: to finish one rite of passage into adulthood before he begins his adult prison sentence.

And then there are the other paths into adulthood. There are so many of them, and once he hadn't been sure when he would know that he had arrived at the stature of a full wizard and a man.

There is so much that he will miss, and bitterly, once he's immured in that grey and icy fortress: flying and sunshine and sweets and Quidditch and sex. All the life he's going to have is going to happen in the next five or six months. They'll take it all away, of course, but he wants desperately to have had it. He can't dither; he has to simplify. What does he want? To finish his education, then; to have all he can of sex, for certain, at least so that he doesn't so keenly regret his woeful inexperience; to see some part of the world—something forbidden, something previously withheld—and daringly, he decides that he wants to see some part of the Muggle world for himself. That ought to be a test of his courage, a small enough test that he'll have the satisfaction of passing it.

Three wishes, then, just as in the fairy tales, before he vanishes into darkness.

***

When Draco says that he wants sex, he means the real thing. He is increasingly dissatisfied with Neville, whose touch is so gentle and affectionate that sometimes it doesn't feel like sex at all. He supposes that's to be expected; he began with Neville by pretending that his mother was holding him.

What is the real thing?

He never had sex with his aunt Bella, but her voice used to give him a shivery delight when she told him forbidden stories, the things that his parents never told him about Death Eater raids, and which of his schoolmates' parents had been killed by order of the Dark Lord. He knows that he used to have a persistent fantasy of asking her to marry him, and that there were nights, after listening to those stories, that he lay in bed and stroked himself into physical release. Not for the actual images in the stories—which now make him shudder—but for the velvet electricity of her voice. She didn't need to touch his skin, when she was already probing and stroking far below it.

He blushes violently, suddenly remembering the sensation of her mind entering his in Occlumency practice.

He remembers the summer that Rodolphus and Bellatrix came to stay with them, and his mother gave him a sharp cryptic warning that he was to be fully and formally dressed before coming down to breakfast. Usually, in the warm summer mornings, he liked to walk through the French doors onto the terrace in nothing more than his white silk tunic, to enjoy the early morning air and the view across to the formal gardens. The Manor was hidden from Muggle and wizard eyes both, and there was no one around for miles.

Seeing no reason for the order, he defied her the very next morning. Standing on the terrace in his bare feet with the cool shimmer of the short silk garment on his skin, he felt eyes on him, as if someone were in fact touching him all over; he turned and saw his uncle Rodolphus standing in the doorway, smiling his wolfish and angular smile as if he recognized an invitation. His mother appeared a scant few seconds later, glared at him and banished him upstairs to eat breakfast alone.

He'd been intrigued and titillated by the sensation of eyes on his body, and wanted to feel it again, but there was something in his mother's manner that warned him that she would brook no disobedience on this point.

He understands now that his aunt Bella loved power, and his uncle Rodolphus, young male flesh, and that they both found him beautiful. The memory of her voice, and his glance, is still enough to help him bring himself off, on the nights that he's sleeping alone. He knows how those two stories ended: Bella on the battlefield and Rodolphus in Azkaban. He puts that out of his mind. He thinks, instead, about what Rodolphus might have done next, had his mother not appeared. Say, had she taken a long lie-in that morning, or been visiting—someplace far from Wiltshire and the Manor—say, paying a social call on his Tante who lived off the Normandy coast.

There's another memory—Snape, his Head of House, pushing him up against a wall in sixth year to question him about what he was about with his skulking the halls at all hours. Trying to knock some sense into him, he realizes after the fact, and the man didn't touch him except for that initial shove. But Snape was _deadly,_ and he knew it even then, and in retrospect, in fantasy, it's enticing: Snape's voice, the dangerous velvet of it—the voice of a man in love with power, not to mention in love with _a Power_. He always knew that there was _someone_ aside from the _something. _(He puts out of his mind what he's learned since, that the Power in question was not the Dark Lord or Bella but Potter's Muggle-born mother.) The coal-black hair, and the fiery eyes, and the cloak that snapped behind him when he stalked and turned in the classroom, even the faint whiffs of the plebeian deepened the sense of suppressed fire (the greasy hair and the way he'd swear and spit when Slytherin lost a Quidditch game—and, sometimes, just the ghostliest trace of the North in his otherwise patrician tones).

Snape, or at least Snape's voice, gives him something else to consider when he's asking what is real sex.

This list is disturbing him now, not so much because two of the people on it are relatives and the other a teacher, but because all three of them are dead. It doesn't bode well for his sexual prospects that all of his fantasy figures are most decisively dead.

Pansy is dead too. This is not boding well _at all._

Power, that's what he's looking for, power and a sense of fun. That reminds him of one more figure from childhood, whom he'd almost forgotten—Emily, the girl in the Quidditch painting in the common room. She's not so distressingly _related_ to him as Pansy (or Snape, or Bella, or Rodolphus), so he has a go at an imagined tryst. The problem is that he loses the thread thinking about all those clothes. His mind wanders before he gets much beyond the Quidditch robes and the first layer of old-fashioned Muggle clothes, and he hasn't a clue about the layers under.

On the other hand, she's a Quidditch player, which promises athletic fun: a Beater, which promises force and endurance. And she said possibly off color things to him about knocking him off his broom. He knows that's not all she meant. He hears that the Victorians and Edwardians were quite kinky behind closed doors. Would she spank him? Tie him up? Maybe she's aggressive and would save him the trouble and take off her clothes herself—and his too. He will be a gentleman and not wear too much.

On yet another hand, he has no idea who she is. She could be dead, and that would not help his average. And if she's alive, she's 104 years old.

Five people he can imagine_ that_ way, and they're all dead.

But Emily is enticing, with that cascade of thick dark hair…

His mind is wandering on the subject of luxuriant hair, and suddenly he's remembering the end of that first flying lesson, when Granger touched him just a little longer than was proper—when her fingertips started moving on his skin—and he imagines that she didn't stop. He remembers her flare of temper, and imagines that she growls at him with the edge of danger that reminds him of Bella and of Snape, then runs her hands over him as licentiously as Rodolphus did his eyes, and throws him down on the grass of the Quidditch pitch, as he imagines Emily might in the spirit of good athletic horseplay, until she starts pushing up his robes and…

He sits upright in bed, shocked at the idea he's engaged in even imaginary congress with a Mudblood. Excuse him, Muggle-born. Granger.

On the other hand, she's improving his average. Only five out of six of his fantasy figures are dead, and if he leaves Emily out of the count, it's even better. He's not sure where he picked up this tic of counting things up and taking averages. It must be Granger. Yes. He remembers her complaining to Neville that "the problem with wizards is that they don't do statistics."

Well, she would be wrong, wouldn't she? Know-it-all.

He's disturbed to be thinking about her that way, but it's surprisingly hot—the exotic Mudblood thing, he supposes.

Neville, at least _qua_ Neville, is not a figure of fantasy. He isn't quite dangerous enough—or rather, he doesn't show it often enough, and he never shows it in bed. Unfortunately, except for Pansy and their all-in-fun fumbling and groping, Neville is the only person he's managed to coax into bed. If Neville would hold him down and _do things_ to him, Draco wouldn't so powerfully suspect him of pity. And there's really no excuse, because he's more than strong enough to do it; or he could just cast _Incarcerus_ and…

…oh yes.

Granger, on the other hand, scares him. Frequently. But the Dark Magic thing is sexy. On the other hand, she's … well, _Granger._

Clearly, he has no standards. He's not sure if he's bisexual or just desperate. (The cast in his fantasies splits fifty-fifty by sex, and more than two-thirds of them are dead.) On the other hand, Granger has improved his average. Maybe he should try out the forbidden-exotic, sex-with-people-you-hate thing.

He tries fantasizing about Potter. No go. Too skinny, and _much_ too annoying. And he can't think of Potter without thinking about the Room of Hidden Things, and Fiendfyre, and Crabbe's death, and that kills his libido dead.

Ditto Weasley. Too ginger. Too loud. At the risk of circular reasoning, altogether too Weasley.

At least he's not promiscuous.

What about the Weaselette? No, she'd hex him for thinking about it, and there is _nothing _erotic about the Bat Bogey hex. Though ginger is not a bad look on her.

He returns to the vexing question of _real sex._ It's not just tab-A-into-slot-B, or some variation. He wants a hint of danger, and naughty talk, and power. Make that Power. He wants to have sex with a Power, and he wants an experience that will mark him.

Oh, unfortunate turn of phrase. Reflexively, he curls his left forearm against his belly to hide the mark that will be on it until he dies, and maybe longer.

Longbottom is a Power. Granger is a Power.

Now if he can just get Neville to behave a bit more like Longbottom-the-slayer-of-Nagini in bed, he has it worked out. It would be good to complete the set, because he rather did enjoy fooling around with Pansy; to be completely initiated, he really has to try one of each sex. But that's probably asking for too much on this short a timeline, given that the other option is Granger. And he shouldn't divide his attention.

Now that he's figured out what sex is, Draco is very definite that he's not going to die a virgin—not if he has anything to say about it.

Then there's that matter of confronting the Muggle world, but he'll figure that out later.

***

As September begins, Draco watches Neville work with the children—watches him with them in the greenhouses, as he takes the daily walk he's permitted, in the company of two Aurors. It's not always the same two; there's a rotation, whose order he hasn't figured out. Perhaps it's switched at random, to keep him guessing or to keep him from talking to them—not that such a thing is necessary. His guards make it quite clear that conversational overtures would be unwelcome, and that it's not only duty, but a matter of personal sentiment on their part.

He lingers as long as he can until the Aurors move him along, peering into the foggy windows of the greenhouses; occasionally he catches a glimpse of Neville's shaggy hair, as he leans over the children at the potting bench. He's jealous of all of that solicitude and affection flowing away from him—and what's more, flowing toward _them,_ the grubby and unworthy children of blood-traitor parents. Else why would they be orphaned? And the others, the others he doesn't even want to think about: Muggle-borns, some of them too young for their Hogwarts letter, except they've been down for the school since they were born, and their families are dead now. Death Eater raids were thorough, if nothing else. It's an amazement that as many children survive as do.

They'll all grow up to hate him and his. As it is, now one of them has caught sight of him and is pointing, and there's two or three little rat-faced creatures staring at him. No, let him correct himself—they don't look like rats. They have nice round Hufflepuff faces: chipmunks then. But with rats' eyes. The eyes of intelligent, hardy, ruthless predators who won't be satisfied until they've brought him down. They're waiting.

Even worse than that is to see Neville with Granger. Saturday mornings Draco still works with her, doing flying lessons—and he won't complain, she's an assiduous student—but now Neville leaves him in the company of two Aurors while he goes to the greenhouses to finish one project or another. He emerges, usually, about five minutes before the lesson is to end. And then the two of them, he and Granger, talk and joke and invariably Neville touches her arm, and Draco feels the blaze of jealousy—and that's just what it feels like, a flare of flame, with all the terror of fire—starting in his belly and blazing up to make his face burn.

They aren't looking at him, and he supposes that's just as well, because he doesn't want them seeing him like this. On the other hand, they're looking at each other. Granger is reaching up and patting Neville on the shoulder—well, that was on purpose, he thinks, no way that she could have accidentally done that, not when Neville tops her by nine inches or so. It's really his face she wants to touch, or his hair. He can see that in the way that her hand lifts from Neville's shoulder, hovers a little in the air, and then drops back to where it was.

She hasn't worked up the courage yet, but when she does, it's all over. He sees that in the way that Neville looks at her when she glances away.

Worse is the Saturday in mid-September when Neville shows up at the close of the flying lesson to take Granger's arm and tell her they're meeting Harry at the pub and they're already late—sorry, but he forgot.

For her birthday, he says.

Oh, another bloody party he's not invited to. Of course. Doubly not invited, because the pub they're going to is the Three Broomsticks, not the dodgy Hog's Head (although he's pretty sure he's not welcome in the other one either, since he learned that the scruffy barman is the late headmaster's brother). Not invited because he's just the hostage they're being _humane_ to, the soon-to-be-indicted junior war criminal. Not invited because they never liked him in the first place.

He does not review any of the reasons that they might not have liked him. All he can remember is Potter turning down his offered hand on the Hogwarts Express. Everything else vaguely follows from that. He doesn't remember how he tormented Longbottom, jeered at Granger (though he does remember, indignantly, how she hit him), dogged Potter and Weasley with mocking slogans in fourth year and with the full force of the High Inquisitor in fifth year.

He watches them walk toward the gates. Granger is carrying the broom over her shoulder and walking at a rapid pace—he's amazed to see that she's in step and keeping up with Neville in spite of his longer legs—and, yes (he glares, though there's nobody to see it) there's his arm around her, not quite touching, but hovering about the thought of an embrace.

Then the Aurors remind him that it's time to go back to his room, and they're not being paid to hang about the Quidditch pitch all morning.

As if he were dangerous, in his current state.

***

He folds his arms and pretends he's not peeking at the things on the table, two books—of course, what do you give Granger for her birthday but books?—tremendously dull ones, by the look of it (one on wizarding jurisprudence and one on the history of the Floo system), and three framed drawings.

Well, no, one of them is a painting, showing a sort of garden with a rickety house in the distance, a slapdash structure sprouting gables and chimneys at every angle, recognizably a wizarding house of the rural-bumpkin variety. It's a proper wizarding painting; it shimmers and moves, and there's the sense of depth, but oddly there are no edges. Everything dissolves in light, which is a curious effect he isn't sure he likes.

The other two—he pokes gingerly at the brown paper obscuring them—are equally disturbing. They must be Muggle work, because they don't move. One is a portrait of Granger (with a book open in front of her, _what else?_), Potter on one side (playing with a Snitch, _of course_) and Weasley on the other (with a chess set, _oh please, how boringly obvious_). What draws his eye immediately is the raw attraction between Granger and Weasley. Yes, they've got their clothes on—and Hogwarts robes on top of them yet—but that space between them just _wants_ to close. The other… he does a double take, because there is Blaise Zabini, as he ever was in life, but _not moving,_ and somehow re-created on this flat paper, moving a chess piece with a sly and knowing air—and the opponent is himself.

Who made that drawing?

He squints at the signature in the corner: _Dean Thomas._ The other Muggle-born in Gryffindor House.

But why does _Granger_ own it?

There's more going on here than he suspected, and none of it makes sense.

***

After Granger vanishes into her room for the night, Draco resolves that tonight he's going to talk to Neville about what would make him happier… well, what he would like, anyway. He paces around the room, thinking about how to approach the subject. He's had all afternoon to think about it, but he hasn't come to any good conclusion about what would work best. Indirection is wasted on Neville, as are most of the wiles he used to such effect on Pansy. The last time he tried a languishing look, Neville offered to go down to the kitchens and get him a snack—_not_ what he'd had in mind, although that was easily enough corrected by telling him that there was something else he'd rather be putting in his mouth.

Sometimes it's better just to spell it out, in words of less than one syllable.

He really misses Pansy at times like this. One languishing look (his) followed by two rolled eyes (hers), and they'd be playing slap-and-tickle on the couch in the common room, and everybody else prudently would have found something to do at some other location. They both knew the rules of the game, too—keep your clothes on but otherwise everything goes except for you-know-what. He misses her terribly, especially the way she'd laugh, and then he'd laugh, sometimes at nothing at all. Fooling around was fun, not something terribly solemn. They understood each other—hard not to, when they had an erotic and affectionate history going back to age four.

Even if he was (as she insisted) a mean boy. She was a mean girl, he thinks, mentally sticking his tongue out at her, wherever she is. He liked her that way.

Neville, on the other hand, _is_ terribly solemn—gentle and reverent—as if he were touching something fragile that had been broken and precariously repaired. Draco does not want to think about himself that way.

Real sex (as opposed to fooling-around) is grand-operatic and dark. He wants to be taken by a Power, held against his will and taken. Well, not really against his will, of course, because he's requesting it, but reminded forcibly of the other's strength. A Power should bloody well act like one. The slayer of Nagini should not stroke him as if he were a baby kitten and then kiss him on the forehead.

Well, how to say that?

No good way, it turns out. Neville's look darkens as soon as Draco's explanation passes out of the shadows of hint and into the light of plain statement.

"No, I don't think so," he says, with a slight frown.

Draco retains enough of his sense of the ridiculous to realize how stupid it would sound to beg. However, he doesn't want to retire from the field of battle without saying something.

"I didn't realize you were a prude," he says, somewhat sniffily.

Neville shakes his head. "No." He appears to be thinking about it, and then adds, "I'm surprised you'd ask for something like that, given _whom_ you're asking."

That's all he'll say. There's something moving under the surface, of course, but Draco knows better than to poke at it—well, he knows better, once all of his sallies have been met with "No," in that tone he's coming to think of as Longbottom-ticking-off-the-Dark-Lord.

All of that _force of personality_ could be so much better employed in more pleasant ways, he thinks. Draco is not exactly conversant with the notion of "no" meaning "no," since in his experience with family and friends, at worst it meant "maybe" and usually "yes, in a minute." On the other hand, Longbottom doesn't belong to either category, really. He isn't sure to _what _category he does belong (surely "lover" is wrong here), but what is certain is that he does not like this at all.

And someone is going to pay.

"Don't pout," Neville says, and then adds, in an attempt to be playful, "It's not a good look on you."

Draco glowers at him.

"Nor is that," Neville says. "You're reminding me of why this is not a good idea."

There's no honorable retreat from the situation except to flounce off to his room—except that means sleeping alone. The someone who's going to pay is him, he realizes.

***


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer:** I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

***

Early in October, Draco is studying Potions (alas, the textbook only) while Neville and Granger conduct a training in the Patronus Charm for the Hogsmeade villagers and everyone staying at Hogwarts who hasn't yet mastered it. The rogue Dementors in Hogsmeade have given the Ministry enough of a scare that apparently they've recruited all of the Dumbledore's Army veterans into the civil-defense training effort. The sky outside is clear and bright, but he knows it's gotten colder in the last week—just a warning of what's coming when winter arrives. He is just resolving _not_ to think about the question of the fire, when there's a knock on his door.

As if he has a choice about answering it…

At first he thinks he's dreaming, because the woman who enters, tall and thin in black robes, looks so much like Bellatrix … except the hair is brown, actually a soft brown, and the voice, while it's the same voice, or nearly, is far gentler. At the moment, it's tentative and a little shy, as she extends her hand. "You must be Draco," she says. "We haven't met. At least that you would remember."

He stares at her, not quite sure she's real. Who would she be to look so much like Bellatrix, who's dead? It is real, though, because behind her is Headmistress McGonagall, which signals to him that this is some manner of official visit and he had best watch what he says.

"I'm Andromeda Tonks." He's still puzzled. "Your mother's sister." _Oh, that one. The missing sister. The renegade._ She reads his look and she's actually quite cheerful about it. "The blood traitor, disowned, blasted off the tapestry. All that. But nonetheless your aunt."

He nods, and without words puts his book down and shakes her hand. She'll get around to the matter of her visit, he's sure, without any help from him. He indicates the chair by his desk. She sits. He's still marveling over how much she looks like Bellatrix returned from the dead.

The Headmistress nods silently to both of them, and slips out, closing the door behind her.

"Your mother wrote to me and asked me to come here," she says.

He looks at her, keeping his face expressionless.

"It's a long story," she says, sounding a little nervous. "We really haven't seen each other since we were young… oh, your age, or maybe a little older." She smiles, which isn't really a smile, more of a grimace to keep something at bay. "And I wasn't sure…"

He nods. "You look like her. Like my mother, but even more like Bella." She winces as if he'd struck her, and goes pale. Well, that was plainly the wrong thing to say. He has to be more careful about saying the first thing that comes into his head.

She takes something out of the purse at her belt, and puts it on the desk in front of him. Pictures. She fans them out with one hand, like an expert card-player, then points at each in turn. "Your cousins. Nymphadora, that's her with the pink hair. And her husband Remus, your cousin by marriage."

Draco is too shocked to say anything (the _idea_ of having a werewolf as his cousin!).

She indicates the next pair of pictures, each containing a baby whose funny tuft of hair seems to be turning color. "And their son Teddy. That's him in both pictures."

Draco recognizes a face he doesn't much like. He picks up the second picture to peer at it, just to be sure. "That's Potter."

Andromeda seems unsurprised by the hostility he isn't hiding too well, and ignores it. "Yes, Remus and Nymphadora asked him to be Teddy's godfather." She looks him in the eyes. "He and his fiancee are helping me with Teddy."

He doesn't like the sound of that, but what is he going to say about Potter and the Weaselette being foster-parents to this tiny cousin he didn't even know he had? Not really a cousin, if the Black Family Tapestry is a right and proper guide.

He puts down the photo of Potter with the baby.

There's a last pair of pictures, one showing a skinny little girl with wild hair carrying a chubby blond toddler under one arm and a racing broom over her shoulder, and the other a group portrait with the same two children, each on its mother's lap. The woman holding the little one looks familiar… "The last time I saw you," Andromeda explains. "Right after the last war. Your mother was so proud of you that she actually ignored our quarrel and came to my picnic to show you off." She smiles and dabs at her eyes. "Nymphadora spent an hour taking you for rides on her new Cleansweep. You were rather disappointed when she stopped."

Draco frowns. He's not sure what this has to do with him. He doesn't remember any of this, although for a brief moment he wonders what it would have been like to have grown up having an older cousin—to judge from the pictures, a keen flyer.

He looks up from the pictures to the curiously gentle glance of this woman who's a pale copy of Bellatrix (neither so dark of hair nor so fair of skin). "You can keep them," she says. "I brought them so you'd know who the rest of your family are."

Then she tells him what Headmistress McGonagall told her about his problems with everyday magic. He immediately frowns, bites his lips, and folds his arms across his chest. No, he is not talking to her about _that._ He is not talking to anybody about that, and how dare the Headmistress tell this total stranger. He knows that Neville and Granger know, and that's bad enough—though it's clear that they've been keeping their mouths shut, for which he supposes he's grateful.

She says, "Your mother has been asking what's wrong."

Draco stands up and glares at her.

"You haven't told her," she says.

Of course not. Of course he hasn't told her. He isn't going to think about why not, but the surface reason he certainly can say. "I don't want her to worry. There's nothing she can do. There's nothing _I _can do." He's getting angry now, at this interfering stranger who is about to kick everything over. "Don't you dare tell her. You have no right."

Andromeda gives him a curiously complex look: there's what looks like pity, and something like … like that look that Granger has, when she's _thinking_ and there's something back there that she won't discuss. Something ugly. She says, very slowly, "I think you're assuming that the problem is permanent."

Draco glares at her, and he can feel his nostrils flare and his ears pull back. How _dare_ she. (How dare she say aloud what he's been dreading all this time?) It's all he can do not to bare his teeth at her.

She says, "My daughter—your cousin—had a similar problem. For the better part of a year, but it did resolve."

He can't help his curiosity, but he won't ask. She reads it on his face, no doubt, because she continues, "She was in very great emotional distress. She… wasn't herself. There were things she couldn't do, that year." She's compressing her mouth into a hard line, and there are tears in her eyes. She takes a deep breath before continuing. "It was a very difficult thing, because she would not talk about it. Not to me, anyway." She looks at him. "Your mother is very worried about you."

He shakes his head, arms wrapped around himself, as if the wind is blowing straight from the north and he'll never be warm again. "Tell her I'm all right," he says. "I'm studying, I'm eating, I'm sleeping. All the things she worries about. I'm all right."

Andromeda sits silent in the chair giving him a very long look. Finally she says, "I know this isn't very helpful, but try not to worry so much. It will come back." She smiles. "The noble and most ancient house of Black is notoriously high-strung. Do bear that in mind. You're one of us by way of your mother." She takes his hand; he lets her, only because she looks so much like Bella and it would be rude to refuse. "Write to me if you need. I'm not so easily worried as your mother." She takes a slip of parchment out of her pocket. "Here's the address."

He looks at it. _Andromeda Black Tonks, c/o Molly & Arthur Weasley, The Burrow, Ottery St. Catchpole._

His mouth twists in revulsion—she's staying with _them._ Not only keeping company with Potter and the Weaselette, but living with the Weasley parents. She's asking him to write to her, care of the ancestral enemy. He shudders. She's out of her mind if she seriously thinks he'd even contemplate it.

Out of politeness, he nods and puts the slip in his Potions book.

***

The next days of early October bring a curious mix of news: Neville reports to him that Granger has somehow secured access to the Potions classroom for him, provided he's accompanied by an Auror and in the company of what Slughorn calls "reputable students." He reads between the lines that eloquence and some amount of bribery were involved. And he's on the revision schedules that she's prepared, although some vandal has lined out "Hogwarts" above his name and written "Azkaban," which makes him shiver.

The hand isn't Granger's or Neville's. Weasley, probably. Weasley hates him with an undying fervor. Potter appears too weary to bother with it any more, or that was his impression the last time he saw him. His old nemesis looks nearly as dreadful as he assumes he does himself; he has dark circles under his eyes and a grayish cast to his skin. Not sleeping, of course. For the first time, he envies Potter his spectacles, because they do serve to hide the eyes.

Granger confirms his guess about the defaced roster, and in the next breath asks him to restrain himself. "Try to pretend the war is over," she says.

"As if I could miss that, given that I lost," he retorts. "And Weasley's going to rub my face in it."

Granger looks at him with narrowed eyes. "Do you know why he hates you?"

"Oh, no, Granger, I haven't a clue. Do enlighten me."

She either misses or ignores his sarcasm. "There's your constant jeering about his family having no money, the jibes about Quidditch, et weary cetera. Making fun of his mother, which I notice you don't tolerate in the case of your own. But what really does it is what your family did to his sister. That he doesn't forgive, ever."

"What are you talking about?"

"You had the Dark Lord as a house guest, and that wasn't very pleasant, was it?" How dare she, except per usual there's not a thing he can do about it. "Now imagine him taking up residence in your head."

He opens his mouth and then closes it.

She adds, "For most of a year. Thanks to your dear father."

"So I'm not supposed to say anything back… to _that._" He points to the defaced roster.

"You can if you like, but it wouldn't be wise. It's not only Ginny, you know. There's his brother Bill, whom Greyback savaged, and Fred—gone thanks to Bellatrix. I wouldn't provoke Ron Weasley just now, if I were you."

She gives him a long look, which he returns defiantly. Then she shrugs as if shaking something off her shoulders. "Don't worry, I won't say another word about it. I am not Ron's mother, or yours. I don't have time to waste restraining you idiots from killing each other. Do as you like, and on your head be it."

With that, she turns to Neville to talk about scheduling the Potions classroom, and ignores him entirely.

***

Then there was the matter of the revision schedules. Which are brilliant, by the way, and go far to explain how Potter and Weasley got away with what they did. Granger organized the two of them as ruthlessly as any general marshalling troops, and he is now in Granger's army himself.

"Do you object to being organized?" she asked, and he replied, "No, I hear and obey."

He had been feeling extreme hostility in all of her reactions, from the moment he walked into the room in his dressing gown and sat down next to Neville to pet the huge cat in his lap. She was glaring at him—whether on account of his proximity to Neville or to her cat, he's not sure. He admits it, he was overplaying that, leaning in and flirtatiously telling Neville how he was spoiling that great beast of a cat. It was too amusing to see the look of astonishment and then hurt on her face.

When he leaned in over her shoulder to look at the revision schedules, she flinched.

But when she turned and looked at him, their faces mere inches apart, her look was curiously open; her eyes took him in—traveled over his features, almost as if she were taking inventory—but it was pure looking, as if he were a plant or a rock or some sort of other natural phenomenon. She looked at him as if he were not looking back at her. He felt his face heat, and sat back to get out of range—and then it got worse, as she turned and looked at him _all over, _with the same sort of disinterestedly curious glance.

Abruptly he was aware of his bare legs and his short nightshirt, under the open dressing gown.

Her gaze reminded him of being eyed by Rodolphus—it had the same tactile quality—except the intent wasn't there. She was just curious, asking questions with her eyes, comparing—to what?—and taking notes. He was being _studied._ Knowledgeably—well, how else does bloody Granger do anything but knowledgeably? And just what is it that she knows?

As in that moment at the end of the first flying lesson, he had a sudden awareness of his body—this time, not only the bare skin under his clothes, but the muscles moving under the skin, for all he knew the nerves and the bones. It went beyond being stripped naked—more like being anatomized—and he found himself both disturbed and aroused. Fortunately, she turned her back to him to continue writing. He bit his lip and crossed his legs and tried to quell the physical response by thinking of something cold. Arithmancy equations. The empty spaces between the stars. Cold oatmeal. Damp socks.

***

The other thing for which Draco blames Granger is the fight he had with Neville, the first fight they've had, unless he counts the unfortunate silence after his proposition about how Neville could be more interesting in bed. (He doesn't count that, because he's trying not to think about it.)

As soon as Granger had left with her sheaf of parchments, Neville turned to him and said, "You were doing that on purpose. To needle her." Draco is quite clear on what Neville means, and yes, he was draping himself over Neville as a demonstration of his satisfaction with what has actually begun to bore him.

He smiles, neither admitting nor denying.

Neville says, "You really think it's funny, don't you?"

"I think you _fancy_ her. I think you don't want her getting _ideas_ about us_._"

"So you mean to leave no doubt, eh?" Neville is flushed and agitated, far more than he's been in recent history. Probably not a good sign, but Draco never has been particularly good at reading the weather glass of oncoming trouble.

"You fancy her, don't you?"

Neville blushes and says nothing. Draco smirks.

"I'd think there were much better prospects. After all, you're a war hero now, and you could have anybody you wanted. You don't have to settle for your House swot, even if she did save your sorry arse in Potions…"

Neville is staring at him with a cold expression, and Draco suddenly guesses that he's probably succeeded in calling up a whole host of unpleasant memories, none of which is going to tell in his favor. He's the featured player in most of them.

"I think it would be best if you left," Neville manages, jaw clenched. "Now."

Draco recognizes the implacable face of serious trouble and absents himself—strategic withdrawal in good order, _not_ retreat—to his own room where, as before, he sleeps alone.

***

What Draco hadn't dared to say to Neville, given the murder in his eye just then, was that Granger could bloody well have him, and with his blessing, if only he'd just leave it alone long enough… long enough for Draco to have a taste before they buried him alive in Azkaban. Was that too much to ask?

There's a little piece of his brain that starts humming the refrain of the old grievances: Neville is by birth one of his own, and he, as a Pureblood, has first claim ahead of a Mudblood—no, Muggle-born. He has to work on this. Not saying that word. Even when muttering and swearing in the privacy of his own head.

He knows perfectly well that Neville wouldn't accept that argument. He scarcely does himself; it's more a way to wrap words around his offended sense of entitlement. Realistically, Neville and Granger are old comrades; they've fought side by side in three battles—yes, he recognizes the set-to at the Ministry in fifth year as a _battle_ now—and the engagement at the foot of the tower in sixth year, and then of course the final battle that decided everything. He's the interloper. There's no reason Neville should want anything to do with him.

Nor Granger either, and he has to admit, however grudgingly, that she's done him disinterested kindnesses, the last of which has been persuading Slughorn to let him join the others in the Potions classroom.

He really should watch himself, because he's busy doing himself out of a sex life, among other things. Neville successfully said no to the Dark Lord, and now understands that he can say no to any lesser power as well. In realistic, day-to-day confrontations, no one is going to escalate to binding him and setting him on fire, so anything short of that isn't going to move him.

It makes him formidable—and "formidable" never before had been a word he'd have applied to Neville Longbottom.

The world has changed, and it really doesn't care what Draco Malfoy wants. Those irritatingly oracular words of his father come back to mind: _Remember what I told you in Normandy: the sea does not love you. It does not care what your plans are._

Then he had gone on to say:_ There are powers and then there are Powers. Watch the weather, because it's changing._ Implicit in that is that the Malfoys are no longer powers of either kind, and he had best cultivate the lackey's knack of knowing his superiors.

He absolutely writhes in humiliation to think the next part: Neville, and Merlin help him, Granger, are his superiors. They're part of the new ruling caste, or at least the ascendant faction. He's on the losing side, and worse, he's the easily identifiable son of the Dark Lord's right-hand man. Not that this was really the case by the end, but it's what the world thinks. He had best watch the lines of power in the new world, and not the nostalgic daydream in his own head.

***

There are other daydreams he thinks it harmless to indulge, especially when Neville leaves him alone night after night. Some nights it's Rodolphus, and other nights Bellatrix or Snape or Emily, who takes him. It's safe and harmless; they're dead, all of them, or as good as dead, and no harm will come from imagining them rating him for his arrogance and then showing him who the master is. There's something really delicious about the moment when he realizes that it's all out of his control, and there's nothing left for him but to be undone by pleasure. Maybe he's always been like this. Certainly he felt a thrill when Emily threatened to do things to him… even though it was all in fun, just as fooling with Pansy was all in fun.

He doesn't imagine Pansy in any of these dreams, because he knows she's dead, and her death feels so much more real to him than the others—more than Bellatrix, Rodolphus, Snape. Maybe because he cared for her, in his way, or that he wants to remember her as she really was: calling him a mean boy and rolling her eyes at him. Or maybe because, on the day after her death, he had stood there by her bed—strewn with her things, just as she'd left them when she went to Hogsmeade that last morning—and known that she wasn't coming back. Not any more than Greg and Vince, whom he'd already lost.

The fantasy that works without fail begins from the memory of Snape pushing him against the wall: he still remembers the way his shoulder blades hit the stone, and his head snapped back, and he caught himself before it could crack against the wall. The other figure in the fantasy changes, but not that sense memory. He's only too happy to strip it of context, because what he's really remembering is the first and last time that anyone confronted him about the course of destruction he was set on, along with his entire family—the course set by his father, long before he was born—the course in which he had been only too happy to follow, without understanding.

He remembers how proud he was of the way he deflected Snape's attempt at Legilimency. Aunt Bella had taught him well, and now he wonders if she taught him in anticipation of the moment when someone would attempt to find out what he was about and to save him. Had he failed to deflect it—well, he's not going to think about that. It's all dead and gone. Done and can't be undone.

***

When his daydream actually plays itself out in life, it isn't at all how he imagined it. For one thing, it's preceded by a mistake that could have cost him his life. Like many such mistakes, it happens when he's not even paying attention.

It's a bright Saturday in early October, on the Quidditch pitch, and he's been telling Granger that you have to know something about Quidditch to be a real flyer. She's skeptical on that point, having watched her friends' obsession with the sport and having zero interest in it. He persuades her finally to try the basic Snitch-chasing drill.

Once he's in the air, his old instincts take over. He forgets that this is his student; he forgets that they aren't playing Quidditch; he forgets this is _Granger._

When she comes within range and makes a lunge for the fluttering golden insect, she bumps against him and he checks her with the handle of his broom—nicely done, he notes, as it hits the knuckles of the hand with which she's grasping her broom.

Except that the pain makes her hand open, so that she lets go of the shaft of the broomstick; her torso twists as she pulls back, which throws her off balance so that she slides off the broom and begins a long tumble toward the grass of the pitch, twenty feet below.

He sees only the beginning of her fall, because something hits him in the chest and abruptly he's lying on the ground, staring up at a wand pointed directly at his throat, and above it, an undistinguished face framed in short brown hair. The Auror on duty has a face he could not point out again if asked to, but nonetheless that face is busy engraving itself on his memory, outlined against the unbearably bright blue sky, as its mouth moves and reminds him whom it is he just tried to kill, and how he's going to suffer for it. To underline that, there's a sharp pain at his ankle—she just kicked his left leg out. The face is expressionless as it tells him just how little use the world has for any notions of Pureblood impunity—a symmetric pain on the other side, as she kicks out the right leg—and how happy she and many others will be to see him safely lodged in Azkaban. And that maybe those kids had the right idea—give him a nice Muggle-style beating to remind him of his place in the scheme of things—except regrettably, that sort of thing leaves marks.

It's all in a low, expressionless monotone, at once impersonal and horribly intimate. No one could hear it who isn't standing right next to her, and it's so clearly meant for him, yet the tone says that he's less than nothing. That he could be crushed out of existence without a second thought, and there are people who'd queue for the privilege. And while she's standing there delivering this speech, she's clearly toying with the idea of kicking him between the legs, just to give him an idea of what's meant.

It's interrupted by Granger, who stumbles toward them, bits of grass in her hair and smudges on her grey sweatshirt, to tell the Auror that it's fine, thanks for breaking her fall, and she'll talk to idiot face, thanks. "If you're sure," the Auror says, and the change in tone is shocking: it's warm, and full of solicitude, and as far as he can tell, that feeling is genuine.

"No, he's not dangerous," Granger says, "just unbelievably stupid." She glares at him. "Get up, Malfoy."

Once in the apprentices' corridor, she does in fact push him up against the wall—with a great deal more force than Snape did—and tell him just how stupid he was. "Poor impulse control, the real mark of the Malfoys," she says, and how next time she'll just leave him to his fate. Except there won't be a next time, because they're not going to play those games again.

She has his robes bunched in her doubled fists—he feels her knuckles rubbing against his sternum—as she stares at him and says, "Malfoy, you idiot, I am not Harry Potter."

He can't help himself; he reads back to her, in a mocking tone, what she'd said months back—no, Harry's the one with the specs; she's the bushy-haired one. With the teeth. The _girl_ one. And then he remembers her in that abbreviated shirt, flirting with Neville—oh, yes, the girl one. Who's got him pinned to the wall just now. He closes his eyes to avoid hers, but this doesn't help; he can feel himself responding as he does in his fantasies. He opens his eyes and she's looking at him, and she's _caught._ Intrigued.

He tells her to be careful. Because she has a reputation for collecting Quidditch players.

She ups the ante. "And Purebloods," she says. There's a pause that makes him harder for every second it endures, and then she adds, "Which would make you the crown jewel of the collection, wouldn't it?"

Then she tells him that he could _rectify his own reputation for somewhat narrow tastes._ Which is certainly the most academically worded proposition he's ever heard, and for all that, seems dirtier than anything anyone's ever said to him.

"Granger," he says, and it comes out as a groan.

"So, _Malfoy,_ what do you say?"

Reminding him that for all his glorious family name, he's spoils of war, something to be _collected,_ and she's waiting for his answer.

"_Yes._ Gods, yes."

Then they're in his room, and after another push, he's flat on his back again, only this time it's sexy rather than scary and brutal.

He should be unsurprised that she talks, _a lot,_ while she runs her hands over him—about what he isn't wearing under those clothes, and how unconscionably provocative traditional Pureblood dress is. He squirms and calls her names, because he notices that she's deliberately avoiding the places that _really_ want to be touched. He's calling her all the names from before, including the M-word, and she's hissing against his neck that he's an inbred Death Eater wannabe, and an insufferable prat, as her hands wander and do things that inflame him even more.

He flinches as she pins his wrists over his head—because it's certain she can see the Mark, and he knows she does, because he feels her answering flinch. There's a moment of suspension over the abyss—will she hex him, helpless as he is? or get up and walk away?—and then she's sucking on his neck, hard, with the clear intent of leaving a mark there, and crisply pronouncing his name (first name, surname) in between those sharp-toothed kisses. Then she pauses and asks him his middle name so she can recite the whole thing. _Yes, I know who you are, and what you are, and yes, these are my hands on you...._

Her fingertips on his face feel much as her eyes did—gentle, exploratory, ruthlessly missing nothing. She repeats the old insults, "pointy-faced git," as she's caressing his brows, cheekbones, nose, chin—even, absurdly, kisses him on the tip of the nose—and, as he writhes under her, "twitchy little ferret." The insults sting and the caresses warm; it's an improbably arousing combination. All the while she holds his left wrist pinned, so she can see the Mark on the inside of his left forearm; he feels more exposed knowing that, more naked even than when he feels the chill on his skin as she pushes his robes up past his waist, silk sliding on his skin, and describes to him what he looks like to her, "all ice and moonlight. And bits of pink"—she giggles—"lovely pink bits, like sweets. Except that sweet is the one thing you definitely _aren't_."

The only defense against the onslaught is to caress her in turn, to see if he can make her lose control. She understands, perfectly, and turns it into a taut stand-off, eye to eye, fingers on each other's secret parts, taking in the spectacle of the enemy strategically half-dressed and flushed with passion. She seems very knowledgeable about his responses and seems to take delight in pulling them out of him whenever he thinks he's about to tip the balance in his own favor. It uncannily reproduces his fantasy of delicious violation by a Power that knows him to his bones.

It's absolutely shattering when it finally comes apart.

And then, while he's still rocking in the tropical sea of post-orgasmic lassitude, she starts listing all the things she admires about him, morals most strictly aside. The hack with the Vanishing Cabinets, as she calls it, absolutely fucking brilliant. World-class. Hacked straight through the world-famous perimeter of Hogwarts. He doesn't recognize the verb—must be Muggle slang—but he knows what she means. Oddly intriguing to be admired for technical cleverness by an enemy—though it is the kind of praise that counts, isn't it? Enemies can't be suspected of flattery.

He answers in kind: the near-miss with the Killing Curse, the crackle of wild magic: "Wildness, chaos—very Dark. Very pureblood," he says. And all the ruthless things she did to win the war: turning Umbridge over to the centaurs, marking Marietta Edgecombe for betraying Potter's secret society, escaping every trap he or his ever laid for her (but he daren't state it in exactly those terms), up to and including memory-charming her own parents.

This takes her aback; she actually asks him how he knows. Smirking, he tells her how he overheard Potter and Weasley talking. And then he tells her he wishes he could have saved his own parents.

He realizes just how much her ruthlessness excites him, and says so.

It's really only that Bellatrix had thirty years on her. Had they been the same age, she and Granger likely would have been evenly matched—or (heretical thought) Granger might have been the more impressive. That he doesn't say. That would be going too far.

She cleans up after all of it, Vanishing all the traces, in such an off-hand, matter-of-fact way that it's amply clear that she _knows,_ and isn't fussed about him knowing she knows. He wonders if she'd think to touch him if he weren't helpless, and then decides it's not a question he cares to consider.

Then she tells him that it's a one-off; they're not doing it again, not with the insults, because while it was quite hot, she doesn't care to re-fight the war in bed. Maybe in a hundred years, but right now it was too close to the bone.

"In future, you can be my enemy or my lover, but not both," she says, looking him right in the eye as if daring him.

He's still reeling from the first part, which he's storing up for replaying on lonely nights. She's succeeded in making a few improvements to his original script.

***


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer:** I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

***

In mid-October, he's called from study one afternoon to the Headmistress's office. The two Aurors accompany him as he steps through the Floo to the Manor, where his presence is required for some mysterious reason.

He steps into the drawing room, which is empty of furniture. No, there's a rickety table, where they're just finishing tea: his parents and a committee from the Ministry. There's his mother and father, and that Derwent person from St. Mungo's, and a young Ministry functionary in grey dress robes who looks vaguely familiar—might she have been a prefect when he was in first or second year? There's a much older woman with iron-grey hair and dramatic bone structure—she looks familiar from somewhere but he can't place her—and two young Aurors, a gangly youth and a slightly older woman with short hair, his parents' usual guard.

And then, quite unexpectedly, there's Granger. Their glances meet, then flicker past each other. He flushes, remembering the state he was in the last time she looked at him. No, he doesn't want to think about that, not in front of his parents; it's bad enough that he's fooling around with Neville, who's at least a Pureblood.

As they're putting away the tea things—Ministry issue, not the family's ceremonial silver—Healer Derwent explains his presence. Before midnight, they will be finishing the last steps in de-coupling the Manor's defenses from the blood of the Family. The parents, in particular the Head of the Family, were dealt with before tea. Now they are attending to the children. He's puzzled by the plural.

It's actually quite boring. First, he's taken to a side room by the Healer, under guard of the two Aurors who accompanied him here, and she does some mysterious wand-work while he stands in the middle of the room. Then they walk out to the walls of the estate, in the company of his mother, Derwent, and the older woman, who is referred to as the Engineering Consultant—and three Aurors. There's some work with mysterious instruments, and then another examination, then another walk, this time to the outer edge of the formal gardens. And so on into the evening. It's quite crashingly dull, though he knows perfectly well that what's going on is in fact the end of an era. The familiar crackle of magic at the perimeters isn't as strong as before, and he can feel it die for good as he stands at each of the places indicated and the Consultant finishes her incantations. They're cutting the tie between the Manor and the Malfoy family—the magical equivalent of knocking down the castle walls. This is The End, both practically and politically. At least they're leaving in place the notice-me-nots and the Muggle repelling charms.

And the house, what rooms of it he traverses, is empty of furniture and decorations. It doesn't look good.

Night is coming on, and it's increasingly chilly. He didn't bring a cloak, and finally the Engineering Consultant notices that he's shivering. She looks at him critically, frowns, and is about to say something when Granger asks, "Would it be a difficulty if I cast a warming charm on us? I'm feeling cold in here." The Consultant looks from one of them to the other, nods permission, and watches cannily as Granger casts the charm on herself and then on him. His mother is watching too.

Could she be any more indiscreet?

As the evening wears on, the tea pot is brought out again and the young Ministry functionary offers hot tea, and around ten o'clock it's announced that the task is completed. Derwent raises her cup in a toast. "To Decommissioning," she said. "I'd send for some firewhiskey if we weren't all on duty, and…" she glances at Draco's mother, who frowns and shakes her head. No, it's not merely that they're talking about drinking to the fall of his family. Something is going on here that he's not being told. The expression on Granger's face reflects the same sense of being shut out of the grownups' secrets.

Though she's in the company of Healer Derwent, this Miss Clearwater from the Ministry, and the Consultant, who's also some kind of Power. Oh yes, Granger is a Power among Powers.

He finally recognizes the Consultant at the end of the evening, and that only because she's addressed by Miss Clearwater as Mrs. Longbottom. Oh, no. The redoubtable Gran, but out of uniform—no vulture hat and green dress, no red handbag, just severe black dress robes and a hooded cloak. A good thing he didn't know, or he would have been working at _not thinking _about Neville, and trying to not-think is always a disaster, especially when it concerns sex. While things are not going well with Neville at the moment, Draco's feelings toward him are still warm, and there are plenty of improper things that could come to mind. He's sleeping with the enemy, and that's improper enough.

The weather is changing, indeed. His parents are ghosts of themselves, underworld shadows awaiting their fate. His mother fusses over him and kisses him, under the watchful eyes of the Aurors. There's something else on the wind, something she's not telling him. Well, now it goes two ways, he supposes.

Shortly before he is to leave, she asks him if he's written to Andromeda. He shakes his head; why should he be writing to his blood-traitor aunt?

His mother tells him that things have changed and that Andromeda will be important. She doesn't elaborate.

Lying in bed that night, he fills in the blanks: they know they're going to Azkaban, as well. For how long, it's not clear, but the Manor will not be waiting for them when they come back. Somehow, Andromeda promises to be an ally. He thinks about his Owl arriving at the Weasley enclave, groans, and resolves to think about it later.

***

Time pours on faster and faster, as if the hourglass were accelerating the nearer he approaches his doom. It's an eyeblink between his visit to the Manor in mid-October and the much-reduced Halloween Feast at Hogwarts. It's a general assembly of the school, so he is required to put in an appearance.

In a show of supreme defiance, he sits alone at the former Slytherin table, meeting all the stares with his mask of icy disdain. Neville and Granger come into the Great Hall late, as McGonagall is finishing her brief remarks (on the gateway between the worlds, and the need to remember the war dead at this time of year, while enjoying the bounty of the harvest). The two of them slide along the wall, eyeing the tables, and then to his immense shock they sit down at the Slytherin table, with their backs to the orphan rabble. He can see the eyes glaring at their backs; those eyes are glaring at him too. This can come to no good—bloody stupid Gryffindors with their symbolic gestures. He knows he's the one who will pay.

He accompanies them back to the apprentices' corridor, and then he gets to watch the domestic by-play between them as they get ready for the Ministry ball. He hears Neville say that he won't be back until Sunday afternoon; he's going to his Gran's from the ball.

Then he asks her if he can borrow the book of household spells, since he can't remember the spell to take the wrinkles out of his dress robes. She flips it to the page he wants and hands it over. For all the world like an old married couple. But they're conspicuously not touching each other…

He remembers what Granger said before. "In future, you can be my enemy or my lover, but not both." Interesting. He wonders if it's a serious offer. He's feeling the walls of Azkaban closing in on him as the weather grows dark and cold, and while it's pure superstition to suppose that his wishes count for anything, he's tired of sleeping alone. Neville seems to be preoccupied lately, and Draco feels time rushing past.

If he's deadlocked with Neville, perhaps he might try the alternative.

Granger's still arranging her hair when he knocks on the door of her little room. She answers the door with one hand still fussing with the strand of blue beads woven through it; they glow among the wild curls. She's not slicking it back now but letting it have its own sweet will… He stares at her for a long minute, and she looks back with that appraising, tactile glance, and then he manages to ask if he'll see her after the ball.

She says perhaps, if she doesn't return too late.

He resolves that he _will_.

After they leave, he goes to his room and searches through his trunk for his best dress robes, the ones he would have worn to the Ministry ball had things turned out differently. He has hours to get ready. He will be seduction itself when he finally accepts her ultimatum.

***

At eleven o'clock, he dresses and puts the final touches on his hair. He goes to tell the Auror on guard at the entrance to the corridor that she should be told he's looking for her. He has hopes that the message will actually be conveyed, because this one is the least surly.

The fire in his room dies down to ashes sometime past eleven.

He puts on his ordinary robes to lay the fire. Tinder, kindling, logs, all the space left for the air to flow just as Neville instructed. Then there's starting it…

…which he can't manage. He burns his hands.

A bad omen for the evening, very bad. He sits on the bed feeling increasingly miserable. Past midnight, he hears footsteps in the hall. It's her, coming back from the ball in full regalia, rosy with exertion—had she been dancing?—hair coming down in kinks and curls.

He greets her formally, taking her hand with the deep bow that's traditional in Pureblood courting, and kissing it. She's staring at him as if she's never seen anything so strange before. He tells her quite simply that he's thought about the ultimatum and accepted it. He has enough enemies, he says, that he wouldn't miss one.

She insists on changing her clothes, and then she fixes the fire so that it will actually light, and she lights it, and casts a warming charm, and heals the burns on his hands. As the pain recedes, he wants to cry from gratitude because she's being so kind. She's wearing her jeans and one of those ugly hand-knitted jumpers that the Weasley children wear, and he knows better than to say anything about it; in fact, he has the distinct impression that it's a test. He can pass a test; after all, he didn't answer back to Weasley's written gibe about Azkaban.

He doesn't say anything, which is the correct answer.

They sit on the bed together for some long and awkward moments, and then he gives her a shy kiss and twits her about Gryffindor courage. She takes care of the rest. They don't do anything they hadn't done before, but this time it feels much more raw; there isn't the protective heat of animosity, just their two bodies. She's much thinner than he remembers from three or four weeks before. For the first time, Neville's fussiness about feeding her makes sense. It seems as if she's been melting away, burning through her reserves.

They fall asleep together, which is very comforting.

Until he wakes from nightmare, from the room in which they all have abandoned him and left him to the Dementors, the room in which he has already begun the spiral into the heart of his worst memories—and now the Dark Lord has made an appearance, and the great snake once more pours its shining coils across the marble table to devour the corpse of the hapless Muggle Studies teacher. In the dream he notices what he did not in memory: the tears still wet on her dead face.

And that high hissing voice tells him that he's next, after his father and his mother; the sheer terror of it wakes him up. He's sobbing his heart out, as if they're already dead, and she wakes with him.

Once he remembers who she is, he can't get away from her fast enough, but he can't shut up, either, has to talk about Azkaban, because if he talks about it perhaps he can prove to himself that he's not really imprisoned there—not yet, anyway. She reaches out a hand and strokes his back, awkwardly. He shows her what Neville does to soothe him, takes her hands to show her how to wrap her arms around him and make a cradle of her body. She isn't the warm rampart that Neville is, but nonetheless there's something reassuring about her presence—if nothing else, her decisive ferocity on behalf of her _causes,_ by means of which, somehow, he and his have come under her protection—and it's enough that he can ease back into sleep, this time without nightmares.

They wake once more, this time in an embrace. She reaches for her wand, and he's alarmed until he realizes what charms she's casting. Then very simply and straightforwardly, she asks him how far he wants to go, and he tells her he hasn't been down the path… at all. Makes a witticism about how she's inquiring at the sign of the unicorn, which sounds so much better than the raw statement that he's a virgin.

Which isn't true for long, as it turns out.

***

Afterward, they talk, and naively he tells her about his three wishes, and asks her what she knows about Azkaban. Specifically, what she knows about how Sirius Black survived the place with sanity mostly intact.

The news isn't good. Black was a fanatic, in his own way; he got through by hanging on to the unhappy thought that he wasn't guilty of the charges for which he had been condemned. Just like Bellatrix, who survived by concentrating every thought on her grim devotion to the Dark Lord. He already knows he doesn't command inner resources like those.

Oh yes, and there's what else she offers him. With a distinctly wicked expression (he can't see her face, but he hears it in her voice), she tells him that she can manage the second half of his wish about sex, by means of Polyjuice impersonation of whomsoever he desires—so long as she can procure the hairs. (He notices that she doesn't ask him to do it, and concludes that she probably doesn't trust him.) And the quid pro quo—well, he'll be asked to impersonate a woman. Identity unspecified, but clearly someone for whom Granger has unrequited feelings. He wonders who it is who'd turn down a war hero. Oh, and she has the hairs—nothing he needs to worry about—which at least relieves him of the suspicion that her unrequited love is Pansy. Stranger things have happened.

Merlin's beard, the woman has an instinct for penetrating to the uttermost limits—in this case, of the sexual taboos of the wizarding world. Yes, it's done—some do it—but it's considered quite perverse. And, yes, she's read enough to be able to fake sex as a male.

And apparently she has quite a lot of the stuff stockpiled, because they're talking about various scenarios he's only wondered about. Polyjuicing as each other, for example. Oh. Suddenly he's developing some definite suspicions about her uncanny quickness with the flying lessons … and the way she already knew his reactions in their tryst four weeks ago.

She has already Polyjuiced as him. He'd wager his life on it.

So while he's at it, talking to this witch of nearly infinite resourcefulness, he asks her about seeing the Muggle world, London on the other side of the Leaky Cauldron. And she says, in a quite reasonable voice, that she'll talk to Neville and they'll lobby McGonagall. That simple. Taken care of.

And the NEWTs? Not to worry, McGonagall is notoriously fair-minded. _All_ of her students who wish will sit them. Just to be sure, she'll confirm, but she has utmost confidence that this is not a worry.

***

The disturbing thing about Granger is how crisp and sensible and _organized_ she is, even when planning the naughtiest of assignations. They're sitting in bed together, naked under the covers and her warming charm, and she's talking about timetables—not at all his notion of pillow talk. She tells him that he will have to decide on whose hair he wants, and that it will be two weeks before they can do the actual assignation. Neville's Gran has invited her for a house visit, and then there's work to do for her other job. She's thinking aloud, and he's wondering what _other_ job she means. She's already working at the Ministry, and Neville fusses over how little she's eating and sleeping. Another job? Where?

She looks at him sharply, and says that they'll have to arrange a Hogsmeade visit for the weekend they choose, because she does not want to do this at Hogwarts and in any case, her Potions setup is off site. This puzzles him even more, which must show on his face, because she shakes her head and says, "Don't worry about it, Malfoy. I'm taking care of this part. Just make sure you know whose hair you want so I have time to collect it." She looks once more at her schedule. "We'll need Hogsmeade visits on two different days—for your arrangement and then mine."

"You can go first," he says. "I mean, I'll do the one that you want." He'd told her, after all, that there wasn't _anyone in particular_ with whom he wanted to have sex—that he was just curious. What a lie. Certainly not the first lie he's ever told, but he's going to have to find some pretext to ask for Neville Longbottom's hair. Otherwise, the game will be clear, especially after all the stupid impulsive showing-off he did.

"Poor impulse control, the real mark of the Malfoys." She could have a point about that, indeed. Certainly he never got any useful training in controlling himself, and if his father had succeeded in controlling his _own_ impulses, such as the urge to take shortcuts by getting mixed up with Dark Lords, he wouldn't be looking at Azkaban right now… No, he's not going down that path. He's going to think about how to pull off this deception without getting caught.

***

The next morning, he wakes feeling chipper and cheerful, more so than in months—and that on less than five hours of sleep. Oh, _yes,_ this is why people recommend regular sex. He could get used to this. Very nice, indeed. Granger is still asleep next to him—the bed's narrow enough for one, and with two, it's tight and tangled. He doesn't mind, because it's _warm,_ and even if her hair is all over his face, he doesn't mind that either. In fact, he takes a bit of it in hand and kisses it, which is silly because of course she can't feel that—it's just hair.

He turns a bit and kisses her on the forehead, the silly thing that Neville does to him, except this is in gratitude, not his trademark emotion by any stretch, but it's not every day that one ceases to be a virgin. In the opposite-sex division, he thinks with a smirk. And she's going to take care of the other, as well. And he wouldn't mind having another go, just now…

She turns and snuggles into him, murmuring, which just reminds him that he's interested. Yes, another go would be nice, just the thing. He whispers in her ear, "Granger."

She opens one eye. "Malfoy." Doesn't seem the least alarmed to wake up with him, either. "What time is it?"

He turns to look at the clock. "Just past six."

"Seven a.m. on the Quidditch pitch," she recites. "Flying lesson." Ye gods, the woman is a walking schedule book.

She puts an arm around his waist, rather deliberately, and pulls him close. "Someone's interested in some exercise before that, I think," she says. She adds, "Randy little devil you are. Unless it's just hydraulics."

He understood precisely _half_ of that last; he wishes she wouldn't drop into Muggle-speak without warning.

She reaches for her wand, casts another warming charm, and then the ones she did last night. "No _amour fou,_" she says, apparently quoting someone, "unless _you_ want to be a father. And I have no desire to be a mother." He blushes; apparently she's just said yes to what he was thinking—or maybe _thinking_ isn't the right word, given what part of the body was involved.

The morning exercise goes quite well, although a bit faster than he would have liked, and then afterward he's pleased that he manages to bring her off too. She laughs and tells him he can be as randy as he likes, as long as he makes it worth her while.

***

Oddly enough, the flying lesson doesn't feel any different than before, although he's looking at her in flight with a proprietary interest. Yes, he's proud of that. He did that, and he's suspecting there's more of him in her style of flying than if she'd gone about it the ordinary way. Maybe this is the way people feel looking at their children—_I made that. And it's good._ He remembers how proud he's always been to be his father's son, and now he has a glimmer of how it feels in the other direction.

He wonders what _her _parents would think to see her silhouetted against the morning sky like a _real witch._ This morning she's flying with him a hundred feet over the pitch and the lake, and she's showing no alarm. Good, quite good. Progress has been made. He is _good_ at this.

And he's good at _that_, too. She even told him so.

As they're coming off the pitch, he turns to kiss her—and she raises a hand to stop him. Oh. They're in public, yes. Not officially… well, not officially _anything, _certainly not _sleeping together. _(He shivers a little, thinking about how nice that felt, bare skin to skin under the warm covers.)

Once they're back in the apprentices' corridor, he makes up for it with the most eloquent kiss he can manage, and finds he doesn't want to let go. When he's kissing her—or doing any of the rest—he's not thinking about Azkaban, or his eventual death, or anything else. It's intoxicating merely to be _alive._

***


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer:** I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

***

In the first two weeks of November, he sets out to do his own library research. He remembers that there are charms he ought to know, even if he can't perform them himself. He spends a fruitful afternoon in the Hogwarts library, in the section with the books on magical healing and health. He's annoyed that they didn't teach this more thoroughly. It's one thing to have it touched upon in passing in Charms class or in private tutoring, quite another when you're going to have to do it yourself.

It's a little frightening reading some of the details. There's a Vanishing component, and if that's done wrong—he winces to think about bits of his insides being Vanished—no, he's just going to have to trust her. It wouldn't be like Granger to do something like that. If she meant him serious harm, she already could have left him to his attackers back in May, or let the Auror have a go at him four weeks ago, or tormented him with hexes he couldn't defend himself against, and then lied about it.

For all of that, she could have left him to the rogue Dementors—well, that would have taken cooperation from Longbottom and the Aurors, if she'd meant to defend herself and abandon him. The Aurors might have gone along with it, but not Longbottom.

She's painfully straightforward, a quite unskillful liar, a person of principle. She follows through on what she promises. She keeps company with Longbottom, who's even more painfully principled and straightforward than she is. And she takes serious pride in doing magic _right._ Perfect, if possible. Full points.

Enemy or lover but not both, she said. So if she's following through on her promise, she's not his enemy.

Neither is Longbottom. He realizes he's no longer thinking of him by first name. He's not sure what happened over the last weeks, but things may have passed beyond the point of no return. It's hard to read these people—particularly the Potter gang, who seem collectively to be given to mood swings and odd points of principle, which in his opinion is a deadly combination. He still hasn't gotten over nearly being sliced to bloody shreds in the bathroom by Potter himself, a year and a half ago. Weasley's beyond hope, of course, and can be depended on to hate him, probably to the grave and beyond. (He imagines being dogged by a vengeful ginger ghost, and shudders.)

Granger used to be the reasonable one—except for that business of hitting him, back in third year—but since the war, she seems more given to fits of temper—and the _language!_ (And she just finished shagging him senseless and promises more of the same, which he never would have predicted, so _de facto_ she's unpredictable.) Longbottom is quiet, but in a way that's worse. He says "no" and means it, and Draco realizes now what a huge mistake it was to bait Granger in front of him.

He's not sure why he's worried about this, given that supposedly he's going to get what he wants from Granger's impersonation, but it bothers him to sleep alone every bloody night, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

***

His pride won't let him go and talk to Longbottom about this—to do that would be to admit that there _was_ something between them, and that he had done something wrong—but he keeps watch for opportunities of conversation where the subject might somehow arise. There's NEWTs revision, of course, though those sessions are tricky, because Granger shows up to a good number of them, especially the ones in the Potions classroom. (He wonders if her deal with Slughorn requires her to show up personally each time.) He likes to keep a low profile in there, because sometimes Potter and Weasley show up, and he has to work very hard to be inconspicuous. Rather like working on invisibility without a cloak, he thinks.

In the second week of November, right before Longbottom and Granger are to visit Longbottom's grandmother for the weekend, the opportunity arises. One afternoon, as Longbottom is returning from his shift in the greenhouses, and Draco is coming back from the library, they happen to meet at the entrance to the apprentices' corridor. Longbottom nods to him, as he absently holds the door open. His other hand is engaged in holding his robes together and he's looking rather disheveled.

"What happened to your robes?" Draco asks.

"Greenhouse," Longbottom says. "Three overexcited plants, as many children of the same description, and some very bad timing." He winces. "And my usual luck. There's probably a bit of work for Madam Pomfrey, too, as soon as I get a look at it."

"Why didn't you just _Reparo_ the robes?"

"Because I want to see what I'm doing. Unless you're volunteering."

Draco draws himself up. "Well, you showed me how to do it Muggle-style. If you have time, I'll do the practical exam now."

To his surprise, Longbottom agrees. Draco goes to his room to get the tools, while Longbottom shucks the robes and his Muggle work shirt.

Draco spreads the robes and the work shirt out on the desk to inspect the damage, which is complex: a clean cut across the chest, followed by a long ragged tear; as well, there are tears in the shoulder seams (something grabbed those clothes and pulled). He takes the work with him to the chair next to the bed, where Longbottom is sitting to take off his heavy work boots and socks. Whatever made the initial cut in the robe was razor-sharp; the damage seems to have gone through both layers of clothing in approximately the same place. When Longbottom sits up, there's a red scratch, clean and not too deep, across his chest, to which he applies something from a bottle he reaches down from the shelf over the bed.

"Disinfectant," he says, in response to Draco's inquiring look. "Muggle stuff, but we don't need anything magical. It wasn't poisonous, just sharp."

He stretches out on the bed to watch Draco work, which is somewhat distracting. Draco sews, deliberately, making the careful stitches he was shown before, while stealing glances at the one watching him. He has forgotten—or maybe never really noticed—that this isn't the little podge any more, but a full-grown man. Longbottom's face is still round—he's recovered the weight he lost in the last months before the battle—but the last trace of puppy fat has vanished into a nice cushioning over broad shoulders and chest. A little softness, very appealing, about the navel, and below that, the heavy trousers hide all but the main lines. Very solid legs, likewise the arms; big, broad hands with blunt-tipped fingers. Thick shaggy hair, falling over his forehead and curling over his nape and upper back in a loose queue. Draco is pleased to note that he's still wearing it in the onyx and silver clasp.

If he were _really_ in trouble, Longbottom would have returned that gift.

At several points in the proceedings, he wonders if he should speak, but there isn't really an opening. He's being watched, and watching. At one point, he looks up and their eyes meet. Longbottom's eyes are brown at first glance, but in the sunlight pouring into the room, they show gold and green, like river-depths.

Granger's are more brown and gold. Oh. When did he notice her eyes?

He drops his glance to the careful repairs he's making. He doesn't want to fail the practical exam, after all.

He doesn't. Longbottom is very pleased with the results. "Very nice work," he says. "You could have been a fine tailor." He smiles. "It's a game we play, you know. What we might have been if we hadn't gotten our Hogwarts letters."

Draco frowns. "But that means being a Squib."

"Or in Hermione's case, an ordinary Muggle. Though she wouldn't have been ordinary, even as a Muggle." He smiles. "My family was prepared for the possibility that I didn't have magic. So no problem there, Uncle Algie aside."

"You seriously talked about this?"

"Oh, yes. I would have been a plant biologist and Hermione would have been a mathematician, or maybe a computer scientist."

"What's that? I know that a mathematician is a sort of Arithmancer, but the others…"

"Well, a plant biologist is a Muggle herbologist. And a computer scientist… think Charms crossed with Arithmancy. You write it and it does itself. It's a sort of Muggle magic." Draco is puzzled by this last paradox, but he can see that Longbottom has come to the end of his powers of translation. "As for you… well, the possibilities are nearly endless…"

"You and Granger talked about me?"

"Nothing bad, actually. We had a great deal of fun imagining you as a Muggle. Under the right conditions, you might have cut quite a swath. Public relations, advertising, those jingles on the telly that you can't get out of your head."

Draco isn't quite sure what Longbottom is talking about, but feels his face heating at the jocular tone. "You're making fun of me because I can't do magic."

"No, we were talking about all you have _aside_ from magic." He holds up the repaired robes and shirt. "Look, you did this. Without magic. Rather well, in fact."

In for a knut, in for a sickle. He may as well spit it out. "I've been wondering why you don't… want to have to do with me any more. If that's the reason. That I'm not… normal."

Longbottom frowns. "Do you really want to talk about this?" He's not sure if it's an offer or a warning, but he nods anyway. "McGonagall and Pomfrey told me that what you're having is temporary problems with ordinary magic. You've had rather a difficult time the last year. But you're not a Squib. Squibs are _born,_ not made." He says, "They wanted me to show you other ways of doing things so you wouldn't feel helpless."

Draco says, "But what about…what we'd been doing?" He's feeling frustrated at how shy he sounds. He really doesn't want to talk about it at all, if he's going to sound this halting. "At night. When you'd hold me." He pauses before the really hard part. "And you don't want to do it any more."

"You're the one who ended that." He opens his mouth to protest, and Longbottom continues, "You asked for something impossible and then stormed out when I wouldn't do it. And then you stayed away."

"Why was it impossible?"

"Do you even remember what you did? Up to sixth year, at least, before you lost interest in everything but your job for Voldemort?" Draco flinches at the name, but Longbottom ignores it. "What you did to me, to the others in my house, to the little kids in all the houses? You were a holy terror."

"But that was a long time ago." He can't remember the specifics, but doesn't want to say so, because Longbottom and his friends clearly do remember.

"You want someone big and strong to overpower you and do things to you. I can't trust myself to do that. Not given what I remember." He bites his lip, a gesture Draco has never seen before. "The leg-locker curse you cast on me 'just for practice.' I don't suppose you remember _that, _do you?"

Draco does remember, abruptly, and decides it's best to change the subject. "Then why did you touch me at all?"

"Because you asked. Because you were missing your mother. Because you didn't even look like the person I hated." There's a long pause, full of tension. "And what you asked for then, I could do."

It feels very like a punch in the stomach. Draco is thinking about that tenderness and how he misses it terribly and how, at the same time, it wasn't enough. Which he can't say aloud. Nor can he say that all of this is happening against the background of the end of his life.

He does, anyway.

"May I ask for it as a last request?"

Longbottom frowns, clearly not understanding.

"You and Granger know. I cast Unforgivables. I'm going to Azkaban. For life, not too long after the NEWTs." Saying it aloud, he's almost in tears. "Can't I have something before I go?"

"Yes, but only what I can do." Longbottom gets up, crosses the room, and touches him on the chin. Tilts his face up, and kisses him on the forehead.

For what he scorned before, he's grateful now. And in any case, he's going to get the other as well. Very soon. Just not from Neville.

***

The day before, Friday of the third week of November, Granger warns him about how it's going to work. They are going to walk to Hogsmeade, Aurors in attendance per usual, and they're going to take the turn around the corner at the post office, where a blind wall faces the alley, and that's where they're going to Apparate—side-along, of course. When they get there, he has to be blindfolded and silenced immediately. This can be done by means of spells or the Muggle option. In any combination.

He hates the blinding hex, but consents to the _Silencio_, since a literal gag sounds dreadful.

They'll climb a staircase and he's to keep to the right wall, as flat as he can; she'll guide him. Once they've arrived, she will remove the blindfold and lift the hex, and they'll proceed with the assignation. They'll return the same way—keeping to the right wall of the staircase on the descent. She'll side-along Apparate them back, and then he is to act as if nothing happened, because no one else will be aware that they've been gone. If all goes well, what follows the assignation will be an ordinary Hogsmeade excursion.

And no matter what he hears on the staircase, he is to stay with her and obey orders. He may hear other footsteps; he's to keep to the right wall. Understood?

He's staring at her. This all sounds very strange.

She looks back. "If you don't trust me, you don't have to do it." She says, "No one will ever know. My word of honor."

"You're taking me somewhere else," he says. "Without authorization."

"Yes," she says, "and I know the price if we're caught. So we're not going to get caught." She doesn't say aloud _you are going to Azkaban if we get caught, _because she knows he'd say no if she spelled it out.

He must trust her, because he agrees to it, scary as it sounds. He's randy enough to be stupid, that he knows too. What did she call it? "Poor impulse control." He's going to Azkaban anyway; the only question is sooner or later, so he may as well grab what he can with both hands.

***

The morning of the assignation, she stops in to see him in his room, and for the first time he sees a gleam of approval in her eyes. She touches him as she talks to him, a little touch on the shoulder, a guiding hand on the small of the back—the proprietary manner of a lover. If he had more experience, he would recognize it as a sort of anticipatory possessiveness. She's taking inventory of the body that she's had once before and that will be hers this afternoon—except wearing a different skin.

He's wearing ordinary school robes, as is she; they're both wearing their heaviest cloaks, because it's mid-November out there. Before they leave the room, she actually reaches inside his cloak and pulls him toward her for a kiss. "Outside this room, we don't like each other very much," she whispers. "I depend on your discretion."

He doesn't fail her.

They walk to Hogsmeade, and they're unfailingly polite to each other, but they're Malfoy and Granger, as ever. At the appointed place, they turn off, and she puts her arm around him, casts _Muffliato,_ then turns in a circle—and it's a nice quick painless Apparition. He'd compliment her on her form, as they arrive, but immediately she silences him and blindfolds him, and he feels the prickle of blood magic—what the perimeter of the Manor used to feel like, except it's hostile—before she quells it with her wand. Whatever this place is, it's well-defended, and plainly it's keyed to Granger herself. He catches a split-second glimpse of a very plain foyer with a clock, and off to one side a closet door, to the other a staircase rising. Very plain. No ornamentation.

She guides him up the stairs, and he's feeling the hairs rise on the back of his neck. The place is _scary._ When the blindfold comes off and she lifts the silencing hex, he's standing in a room with a bed and a desk and a bureau. Alongside the bed is a small table, and on that table sit two tumblers with thick potion frothing in them. He recognizes it, of course. Polyjuice.

She offers him the usual courtesies: Water? Snacks? Loo? No, thanks.

She drops a hair into each of the glasses. The second, apparently, is the booster dose to be taken at the fifty-five minute point. He will be transformed for approximately two hours, and will only have to go through the transformation once. She hands him the first glass and sets a small clock. When the bell sounds, he takes the second dose—no matter what he's doing at that point. Understood?

Also understood: this is going to hurt.

He knows. He accepts the tumbler. The potion has gone to a glowing ruddy gold, like sunrise, and the smell coming off the surface is delicious: grass and flowers. He lifts it to her in a toast, and downs it in one go. (He and Crabbe and Goyle figured that out sixth year: you don't let the stuff touch your taste buds, because like most Potions, it tastes amazingly foul.)

The pain is far less than he expects. It's like bad stomach cramps spreading from his belly into the periphery, but not the full-body agony that buckled Crabbe and Goyle whenever they took it.

"So what do you want to do with me now that you have me? Whoever it is that I am."

The voice that comes out of him doesn't even sound too different from his own, though it's clearly a woman's. As is the body; he resists the urge to pat himself down to see what's different. For the first time he notices that there's no mirror in this room.

Granger is staring at him in what can only be described as loving astonishment, as if she's seeing something far beyond what she hoped. She smiles and touches his lips with a finger—_don't talk._ He smiles back, extends his arms in an embrace, because that's what she's here for, isn't it?

In mirror image, she extends hers. He steps forward, and trips on the robes that are now too long by some inches. Half-falls, half-lunges into Granger's embrace, and kisses her on the mouth—and he can feel that this body has its own habits, its own reflexes, and if this was Granger's lover before, he had best just follow what she seems to know how to do. And one thing she does know, is how to kiss.

He needn't have worried, because this is Granger, after all, and she takes command nearly immediately, kissing him all over his face, and then down his neck, and then he gets the hint and starts undoing the fastenings of the robe ahead of her. She takes a rather sumptuously long time on his breasts—oh, and they are nice, he had no idea it was so much fun—where did she learn this stuff? This is rather hot. And she's desperately flustered, because she seems to have forgotten there's a bed in the room. All of this is happening in the middle of the room. There are tears running down her face when she takes hold of his hips and… well, that is nice. No, beyond nice. Rather intense. He'd tell her to stop if it weren't so completely delicious. Oh. Yes.

Yes yes yes, except that at the moment of ecstasy she loses her balance and they both topple onto the floor; he falls backward, she on top of him, and his head hits the floor. He swears, and she laughs, because apparently his choice of words was correct. He sits up and rubs his head, but nonetheless he's intrigued. Who _is _this?

The bell rings and he takes the second dose. Presumably now it's her turn, and he stands her against the wall, because he does not want a repeat of the last performance. It's fine until he calls her Granger. Wrong. Of course. Granger's lover would call her by her first name. He tries it out. All four syllables of it. Remembers Viktor Krum mangling it.

Oh, this is fun. He remembers some of the things he did with Neville, which seem to work as well on Granger, except that from his own very recent experience it seems a little more drawing-out is called for, and lots of teasing, verbal and otherwise. He must be doing it in the correct style, because she doesn't shush him as before. The only slip is on the final approach, because he's been thinking _Neville_ and of course Neville is a man, and Granger is not, so … he recovers nearly immediately and improvises to fit the circumstances, remembering what she did to him. And all ends well, because once he brings her off she insists on kissing him, a lot, and then leading him to the bed and cuddling with him, murmuring into his chest, "I love you," before dropping off into unconsciousness like a lead weight.

He lies there staring at the ceiling and holding her with one arm, because otherwise she'll roll off the bed, which is uncomfortably narrow for two people. He feels the reverse transformation take him, and actually regrets the other body, because it was rather fun. He'd never thought about what it would be like to be a girl, but that girl—well, she felt familiar. Comfortable. He wouldn't mind walking around in that body… very odd.

She's asleep still, and they're both half-naked, wrapped in the robes they discarded. And his arm is falling asleep. "Hermione," he says. She murmurs something indistinct and cuddles against him. "Hermione," he repeats. She pulls the discarded robe over her face. His arm's in agony now. "Granger!" he hisses.

She comes up out of the embrace, rummages over the bed and the bureau, and rolls to her feet stark naked and in fighting stance, with her wand pointed right at his heart—and she's not awake yet. Once she does wake, she apologizes; he tosses her the robe, because she really does look frightening like that—Vengeance personified, no, Righteous Vengeance—coming at him with deadly intent.

She's really fucking scary. And there is something really wrong with him, because that gets his pulse going. He tries to tease out of her the identity of the girl he just played, but she won't tell him, which is even more intriguing. And then she changes the subject and reminds him that he owes her a name, excuse her, but the next assignation is set for tomorrow, and he can cough up a name, can't he? Or she'll pull something random from the files and he could end up being deflowered by Ron Weasley…

He can feel his color drop at that one. She plays rough. Very rough indeed.

"Longbottom," he says. "Neville. He's right here. That should be easy." Before the words are out of his mouth, he knows that he's slipped up. Damn. Granger _knows._

They get dressed and she does a last quick check of the room, then puts the blindfold on him and casts the silencing hex. They descend the staircase, and then she says, "Step close," pulls him into an embrace, but it's not for the purpose of kissing. She's dropping something about both of them, a sort of necklace, and he feels her turning something over in her hands. Then she lifts it over them again, and pulls him through a doorway. "Wait until I tell you, and then take off the blindfold and open the door." They wait, and after a minute or so they hear the unmistakable crack of Apparition. "Now."

They step out into the plain foyer, and he catches a glimpse of two people in Hogwarts robes ascending the staircase out of sight, as she puts her arm around him and turns to side-along Apparate them.

She lifts the silencing hex as the Aurors turn the corner to see what they're about in the alley.

No time has passed.

He knows whom he saw on the staircase—himself and Granger, hours earlier.

It's impossible, but she has a time turner. And a house with blood defenses. And she just abducted him out of Hogsmeade and brought him back inside a time loop, so no one will ever know.

And he doesn't know for certain, but he strongly suspects that house is a Muggle house. With blood defenses. Oh yes, and the sex was hot. He rather fancies this sex-switching thing, at least in that body. Whoever she is, she must be a lot of fun.

Blood defenses. And a time-turner. And really hot sex.

Granger is seriously scary.

***


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer:** I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

***

Granger finds him the next day, and the pretense is that they're going to Dervish & Banges because she needs his consult about an obscure instrument that they have on display in the closed case inside. This means walking the full length of the High Street, with the Aurors growing ever more surly. One of them is the woman who shot him out of the air on the Quidditch pitch four weeks ago and then read him the lecture about how he needed to be taught a lesson. He wonders which she did first: break Granger's fall or shoot him down.

Granger ignores him and makes conversation with them, focusing particular attention on the one who tormented him. Distraction, he knows, but it's still unnerving. She's asking questions about Auror training and what they think of the post-war recruits. "Well, nobody's going to replace Moody and Tonks," the woman says, "but those youngsters aren't as green as they look. That Dumbledore's Army lot is something to behold. Raw, I'll grant you, but not green—and they don't hesitate to fight dirty when it's called for." She smiles, an expression that frankly scares Draco. "The Weasley girl, for one. The one they're calling the Mrs. Potter that's to be. You'd think she grew up in a Dark Arts family, the way she can throw hexes—nasty combinations, too. Her mother's the one that finished the Lestrange bitch." She laughs. "Molly Prewett that was. Mostly boys in that line, but when they finally do birth a witch, she's nothing ordinary."

Her partner chimes in, "I was in the Auror office when Weasley was talking about what she'd like to do to Lucius Malfoy, and it was something to chill the blood. Started with chaining him up in the Chamber of Secrets and went worse from there. Nothing so clean as _Crucio—_some ugly stuff with knives, and a good slow finish. Glad enough when I had an urgent Owl and had to leave."

The woman laughs. "Well, I'll have to ask her, because that's something I'd like to hear. I have a few ideas of my own on that score." And she laughs. "Did you hear the story that's going around about Malfoy's _lovely consort_?" It's pronounced to mean _whore,_ and Draco tenses because this is his _mother_ they're talking about, and he doesn't know if he's going to be able to bear this in silence.

Granger spares him that ordeal, by breaking in with a question, "So you knew Tonks?"

"Merlin, yes," the woman says, and her tone's completely different: warm and fondly reminiscent. "That girl had spirit, all right. Sirius Black's second cousin, and she announced it right there in the tea room day one, along with all her nasty Dark connections by marriage, Lestranges and Malfoys, and then she said loud and clear that she knew what they were and that's why she was an Auror. That she was the renegade daughter of a renegade daughter and that ought to be good for some luck. Her mother taught her well—she knew some hexes they don't teach at Hogwarts. And funny?—you don't know what she could do with her face. I hear she would have been a prefect at Hogwarts except that her Head of House saw no point, since it would be herself she'd be docking most of the time." She pauses. "And there was nobody else I ever saw _laugh_ at Mad-Eye Moody, and make him like it. Moody said there hadn't been anybody he'd liked as much since Frank and Alice Longbottom."

She adds, "A shame that Lestrange bitch is dead, because there's a whole lot of us that would queue up for a go at her after what she did to Tonks. Made us understand why Moody was on about the Longbottoms all the time, if they were even half the Aurors that Tonks was promising to be. Lestrange had herself quite a scorecard there."

***

He's still shaking when they Apparate into the familiar foyer and she blindfolds and silences him. No matter where Granger took the conversation, the Aurors always circled back to his family. So Ginny Weasley is indulging herself in murderous fantasies about his father, aloud and in public—and it isn't a clean _Avada_ she has in mind, either—and others are laughing along. And they'd like to revive his aunt Bella and _have a go at her_ for what she did to their dead colleagues.

She takes the blindfold off him and lifts the _Silencio_ and looks at him with a solicitous frown. This time they're in a room with a double bed and a bureau; across the room is a full-length mirror. She doesn't need to say it; he knows perfectly well he could turn back.

Absolutely not.

He takes off his boots, drapes himself across the bed with as sultry an expression as he can manage, and says, "I'm ready when you are."

She does a silent _Accio_ and an assortment of paraphernalia settles itself on the bedside table. Four tumblers of Polyjuice—his eyes widen involuntarily—and then a collection of Muggle stuff, tubes and little packets, about which she commences to lecture in classic Granger fashion. He's not sure if he's more amused by the thing she's proposing to wear in a ridiculous place during the act, or disgusted at the other things, which he guesses are what Muggles do in place of the appropriate charms.

Of course, the first thing is to laugh at her. She indignantly responds that she's doing this for his own good, because she doesn't know _Neville Longbottom's sexual history._ He notices that she turns red when she says that, and he can't help it—what an idea—and collapses in giggles on the bed.

Then he ridicules the disgusting and unhygienic Muggle stuff. To which she retorts that she presumes there are appropriate charms, and does he propose to teach them? All the while pretending she doesn't know what that implies—that he can't do them himself. Well. Yes, he says, and then they spend a good twenty minutes in tutorial, at the end of which he's relieved that he's in competent hands. She performs the charms, which do feel odd, especially the cool slickness where it's not supposed to be. He holds his breath a scary few moments, but everything seems to be in order—none of the warning signs of a botched charm—and then relaxes.

She drops the hair into the first glass, and it froths wildly and then settles to crystal clear streaked with blue and gold. Absolutely gorgeous. So that's what Neville looks like, he thinks. For a long moment she's staring into the depths of the glass with an expression of love-struck awe.

Then she snatches the sheet out from under him, which makes him yelp. She strips off her clothes with a complete lack of self-consciousness, throws them on the chair, and then wraps herself loosely in the sheet. Only then does she take the Polyjuice, lifting it in a salute: "Drink to me only with thine eyes," before she bolts it and collapses in the agony of transformation. She actually screams, which sets him back—she sounds as if she's being tortured—and he would know what that sounds like, wouldn't he?

When the screaming stops, Neville is standing in front of him, wrapped in a sheet. A perfect copy, of course, accurate down to the blush that's spreading across his face and neck… as he's transfixed, not by Draco, but by his reflection in the mirror. The sheet doesn't hide his nearly immediate arousal.

Draco is ready to quip about narcissism, when he realizes: no, it's not Neville admiring himself, but Granger looking out through Neville's eyes and seeing him in the mirror… seeing, in the mirror, the man whom she seriously fancies, naked except for a sheet. Oh. Because nothing else explains that reaction.

The expressions he's seen on Neville's face are moving over the face in front of him like cloud-shadows over the ground.

No time like the present, he thinks, sliding off the bed and unfastening his robe as he walks toward Neville, pushes him down in the chair, shamelessly sits down on his lap, in imitation of what he did furtively before, and lets the robe slide down one shoulder as he looks back at Neville and wriggles. It's hardly necessary for the purpose of exciting either of them, though he can't help breathing harder when Neville's hand closes on the back of his neck. He arches into it and says, remembering that this is really _Granger, _"So you fancy our Neville too, do you?" He's seriously excited by how perverse this is—he's talking to two people at once—and even more so, when arms close around his waist and he's hurled onto the bed. Nearly misses cracking his head again, but that doesn't matter.

Neville growls at him, "So what is it that you want?"

He blurts it right out: to be spanked and tied up. What he though Emily might have been intending. In any case, what this version of Neville is only too happy to do to him, with no unnecessary gentleness, either; he actually seems to be getting angry as Draco turns to admire the view in the mirror—for whether by accident or not, he can see almost everything there, and it's terrifically arousing. This is really happening. He can feel it and he can see it. He's set for imaginings for a year of long dark nights, if need be.

The red palm print on his white skin. The sting of same, the sound and the shock of it. The dark robes yanked up to his shoulders. The heat still burning in his rump and thighs, as he's flung on his back on the bed, and Neville mutters something about _Incarcerus_ being a little excessive for the purpose; he prompts with the appropriate variant. He's done his research; Granger would be proud of him. And it's a nice touch, magical bonds that he knows he can't undo. And she knows he can't, either. Thinking about that, he's right on the edge even before Neville's big hands take hold of his hips and arrange his legs…

He likes this ferocious version of Neville, likes him very much, and sneers and snarks and taunts him, to be sure he stays that way. As for what Neville is doing--it's just the way he imagined it, decisive and slow and then increasingly insistent, a little painful in parts, alternate strokes of pain and pleasure (he grits his teeth, thinking that _well-researched_ never felt like this). A process that he's powerless to stop—his part only to writhe in place to emphasize how he can't escape his fate—which thought inexorably pushes him ever closer to the shattering climax, when he can't tell the difference between pleasure and pain, between release and the most annihilating humiliation that can still leave him conscious. At the end, he's screaming.

He's still quivering as Neville's voice tells him what a fine mess he's made all over himself and the sheets, the tone a delicious combination of scolding and praise—if he said that again in a few minutes, Draco is quite sure he'd be ready for another round—and then promptly Vanishes it, too, the part on the sheets, at least. And then Neville is staring down at him—no, not into his face, but at the exposed inner surface of his left forearm. At the Dark Mark. Reflexively, he jerks at the restraints to hide the arm—which of course, he can't. Neville's stare is implacable and smoldering—what might be sexy, very, if it didn't carry such a freight of intense hatred. He's getting more and more frightened at the thought of what could happen next, when Neville murmurs the spell to release him, and Draco sits up to rub at his wrists, which will almost certainly be bruised tomorrow if not sooner.

When he gets up to stretch, Neville points out that he's bleeding—there's a spot on the bed—and that they have to go back right away. Draco smirks at him and says that's the way it's supposed to be, isn't it? He wouldn't be exaggerating if he said it was all perfectly lovely, everything just as it should be, maybe even including the glowering at the end, although that was a little too close to real life.

And now he _knows_ it's Granger, even if it's Neville's body, by the fussiness with which she Vanishes every trace of what's gone before. He settles back onto the bed, staring happily at the ceiling, at the bruises on his wrists, at the spot on his chest from which she has Vanished the evidence of the _very good time_ he just had; he rolls over to look in the mirror at the red marks still on his bum, and smirks at the idea that he's gotten what he wanted. Absolutely. He luxuriates in the burning sensations—of which there are several, some more localized than others—and refuses the healing spell she offers.

***

He can't help noting the expression on her face when she ceases being Neville and she's looking at him with her own features. He blurts out, "Granger." Then stupidly, "You don't love me." How stupid. Of course she doesn't love him, but she has just done him the courtesy of fucking him rather thoroughly. He tries to make up for it. "Do you want me to be Neville for you?"

That's the disquieting part, actually, how she reacts once he's crawled through the gate of agony—whoever that was yesterday, she's a great deal closer to him than Neville is—and he's getting up off the floor completely naked. He's never seen that expression on her face—no, correction, he's never seen it on anyone's face—joy that verges on terror. What a person looks like when she gets her heart's desire.

He resolves to act the part as thoroughly as he can. He is in a very good mood, having gotten what he wanted, and he's feeling generous. As yesterday, the body helps; he has Neville's slow deliberate motion and awkward tenderness, and he can imagine all too easily how this hopeless desire has persisted over the years—seven years, a seven years' term of noble, hopeless, detached friendship and undying loyalty. He kisses her as if he has just crossed a desert and this is his first drink of water. In return, she touches him as if he were made of glass; if anything, she's even more gentle and reverent with this counterfeit of Neville than the original has been with him.

He even consents to wear one of those stupid Muggle things, because he knows that Neville would do that, if not from whatever odd superstitious scruple it is that prompts the practice, then because she asked.

At the end, she's actually calling out his name—no, Neville's name—and he's momentarily frightened, even more than he was when Neville's eyes were staring down at the Mark, because he's involved himself in something immensely powerful, in which he has no place.

He knows he shouldn't, but as he feels the reverse transformation coming on, he keeps his eyes open and fixed on her face, and he sees how her expression changes from diffuse tenderness to wariness as Neville's features give way to his own. Stupid. And even more stupidly, he blurts out childishly, "You made love to him. You made love to her, and you wouldn't even tell me who she was. You _fucked_ me." He's starting to cry, which makes no sense at all. "And you won't even call me by my name."

She replies with truly frightening tenderness, "You never asked me to do that, Draco."

He learns only that the mystery girl of yesterday is dead, and that it was Bellatrix Lestrange who killed her. Granger won't tell him her name, and she sneers at him that he wouldn't know about a lost love, since he probably never had one. He tells her about Emily and how she flirted with him, which made him feel nice. (He doesn't tell her about the naughtier things she said.) And he tells her how he asked Pansy to wear her hair like Emily, and that she refused.

That gets Granger laughing at him, and he asks her if the last two glasses of Polyjuice are for the body swap. He conjectures that this is what she was up to with Viktor Krum, and that's why Viktor always had that self-satisfied smirk on when the Slytherins were ranting about upstart Mudbloods. He's joking, and is somewhat startled to find her taking it quite seriously. She tells him he's off his head as regards Viktor, and that's none of his business in any case, but then she plucks a hair from his head right there, and one from hers, drops them into the potion, and with barely a pause they're clinking glasses and drinking it down.

Once the screaming part is over, he can't resist the urge to jump off the bed and play with Granger's body in front of the mirror—particularly the breasts, which are endlessly amusing—admiring it from all angles, until she sharply admonishes him that they only have so much time. In his voice, which is unnerving—for one thing, it sounds a lot higher and less resonant than it does from inside his own head—and when he turns, it's himself he's facing.

A thin, sharp-faced, grey-eyed creature with pale disheveled hair.

Still fanciable, though. He laughs at the idea he's about to have sex with himself. Literally. Not that this hasn't been the majority of his sex life to date, but there's something irresistibly funny about the situation being made flesh. Mudblood flesh, yet. (No, he corrects himself, do _not_ use that word.) Muggle-born. Inside a Muggle house.

There's a horrible livid flash of suspicion, and then conviction, about what this house is, and whose it is, and in what bed he's about to have sex. With himself. No, with Granger disguised as himself.

If he's right, Granger is far more kinky than he ever suspected.

She's getting tired, because she can't seem to get his body to function properly, and he twits her about the insult to his family honor, at which she _hexes_ him. _Silencio._ In bed, and him practically a Squib. It isn't sporting at all, and she knows it. There's nothing for it but to wait until she recovers her temper, and to make earnest resolutions about how thoroughly he's going to placate her once she does. Fortunately, she knows herself in the wrong, so it's only a minute or so before she lifts the hex.

He applies to her, with fervor, everything he's learned in pleasuring Neville. He's gratified at the reaction, and momentarily wishes he could feel what he's doing.

And then she does for him, just like yesterday, and it's very nice.

He's actually in a very good mood by the time they reappear outside Dervish & Banges, just around a blind corner as before. They go inside, and he tells her some very interesting things about the instrument in the closed glass case. An antique Chinese thaumaturge, he says. For measuring field lines of magical power, in fortifications and ceremonial places. He isn't sure, but it might be at least a thousand years old. There is—was—one like this in the collection at the Manor.

As old as Hogwarts, she says, in a tone of awe.

He knows, but doesn't say, that his family is older than Hogwarts.

***

They return from the Hogsmeade trip, with the Aurors as surly as ever—particularly that woman, who scares him. He's going to have to be very, very careful around her. She hates his entire family and is looking for a pretext to act on it.

Now that he knows that Granger has a time-turner, he starts watching her. That afternoon, she excuses herself for a brief walk before the History of Magic revision session, and returns looking rather more tired. Actually falls asleep, as if it were old Binns and not Neville who's reviewing dates of Goblin rebellions. She refreshes herself with a cup of strong tea at dinner, and then excuses herself to go to her room momentarily. He knows there's a working Floo in there, which is why the room doesn't permit him to enter; that's a potential escape route.

When Granger comes back a few minutes later, she looks haggard, as if she's been working for eight hours. _Which she might well have been._ She does keep it together through the Arithmancy group; that's him and her and Lovegood, who inquires mildly if she's having problems with Wrackspurts or Nargles or some other such fanciful beast; Granger suppresses her irritation with visible difficulty before replying no, but thanks for asking.

He thought Lovegood would make him crazy, but her company is weirdly restful. She looks at him with those very odd eyes of hers, but not a hint of the animus he would expect from someone who'd been locked in his family's cellar for four months. And she does know her Arithmancy, which he supposes one would expect from a Ravenclaw.

The session ends, and Lovegood goes wandering off in search of Hagrid. It's past curfew, so apparently she'll be going back to the Weasley compound by way of the Floo in Granger's room.

He's puzzled. She's working at the Ministry, and there's something else on the side, and then of course there's the other something else on the side (that's him), and she's managing the whole thing by playing about with time loops. And someone high up has approved all this, because it's not as if you can just stroll into a shop in Diagon Alley and buy yourself a time-turner. Granger is scary, and her connections more so.

He is very careful to avoid the thought that he's sleeping with the Recording Angel.

***

The letter to Andromeda Tonks has been sitting on his desk for weeks now—no, nearer to two months—ever since his mother told him to write to her. No, it wasn't a direct order, but he knows his mother's hints, which are more or less the same thing. He's written nothing more than a standard polite bread-and-butter note, thanking her for her visit, the sort of note that Pureblood nephews and nieces write to aunts they don't know well. There's nothing in there the least bit incriminating, or even personal.

What he finds unendurable is the picture of his owl swooping into the Weasley house and being recognized, and the letter being read by anyone but Andromeda herself. For that matter, he's not too sure about her. He's never met her before, and she just walked in and put six photographs on his desk—"your cousins," she said—and rearranged his world. Remus Lupin is—well, was—his cousin by marriage, and Potter is godfather to his second cousin. And there's this Nymphadora person, who apparently met him when he was too small to remember. A sudden very unpleasant memory of a high hissing voice, talking about the Metamorphmagus who married the werewolf. The Dark Lord taunted him about babysitting the cubs, and told Bella to prune the family tree.

He picks up the note and wonders if there's anything he can add to it. The note will arrive much too late to be polite. He could add some sentences about seeing his mother, he supposes.

Six weeks. It's been six weeks. Draco knows he's in serious trouble.

_My mother sends her love,_ he drafts, then strikes it through. Wishes it didn't show through the line—that looks worse. He wishes he could just Vanish what he wrote. It looks terrible like that, that he sent love—someone else's love—and then took it back.

On impulse, takes the wand off the mantel and tries it—

And against all expectations, the offending sentence vanishes as if it had never been.

Oh.

He tries a few other spells: _Lumos._ Yes, light blooms at the tip of the wand. _Nox._ The room is plunged into darkness. _Lumos_ again, and there's that lovely firefly glow. He points the wand at his cloak hanging on its peg. _Wingardium leviosa!_ The cloak twitches feebly but doesn't rise.

It's not perfect, but it's a start.

He finishes the letter, saying that he saw his mother, and that she is in good health. True enough. He'll leave it to her to send love to the renegade, if that's what she means. He hesitates before signing his name, and then decides that he's for it no matter what and he may as well go out in style. His surname is damnation itself, the owl will be recognized, and he's the only person of his generation with his given name. There's no safety in abbreviation or initials, so he signs with a flourish: _Your respectful nephew, Draco Abraxas Malfoy._ Not loving, but respectful. If he read his mother's hint correctly, Andromeda Tonks might be a power of sorts, and he's respectful of power.

***

The last week of November and the first weeks of December are uneventful; he studies for NEWTs and writes letters to his parents and takes a walk daily with the Aurors, unless the one who hates him is on duty. The castle grounds are blanketed in snow, and he's been practicing daily to see if he can get _Incendio_ to come back. He lays the fire in his room, but Neville still has to light it for him. He wonders if he's going to be fearful of fire for the rest of his life.

Granger seems quite preoccupied; every time he sees her in the NEWTs groups, she looks haggard and exhausted. He wonders how much of her timeline passes between the times that he sees her. She doesn't give any hint to the outside world that there's anything going on between them. Very discreet, he thinks with approval. He restrains himself from touching her, although there was the one time that she fell asleep standing at the Potions bench and started to sway dangerously in front of an already smoking cauldron; he didn't wonder if anyone saw it, but leapt forward to catch her before she fell or bumped the cauldron. You don't let personal drama interfere in the Potions lab, and Slughorn is genuinely unforgiving of anyone who does.

Neville, working across from her at the bench, put in the next ingredients and finished the potion without incident. Weasley shot Draco a glare, but Neville looked up and said to Granger, "Hermione, I think we're done here." Glanced at him, smiled and said, "Draco, thanks for the quick thinking." Very firm tone, a little glimpse there of Longbottom-the-slayer-of-Nagini, and Weasley backed down. Draco stood with Granger leaning back against his shoulder, as Neville decanted the potion for testing. Once that was done, he took custody of Granger, put an arm around her, and guided her to the chair next to Slughorn's desk.

For the first time, he starts to think about how chaotic Snape's Potions classroom was, with the seething animosities between the Slytherins and Gryffindors that his Head of House did nothing but encourage. It strikes him suddenly as very bad practice. He never thought about it before, but all of those exploding cauldrons could have _killed _someone. (Not a thought that would have occurred to him at age fourteen, but what did he know then about mortality?) Slughorn may have little love for him, but he runs a very tight ship. Neville is calm and deliberate at the Potions bench, and Granger isn't prompting him.

Snape had hated the two of them, Granger and Longbottom. That had always seemed right and natural to him, since he hated Granger himself and despised Longbottom, but now that things are very different, he wonders why. It seemed quite personal on Snape's part, and out of scale with their actual significance. Something about Longbottom and Granger individually, and even more the two of them together, got up Snape's nose in the worst way, as if they reminded him of some ancient grudge.

***


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer:** I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

***

In the first week of December, Neville and Granger knock on his door as a delegation to let him know that McGonagall has approved the outing to London and arranged for an escort of Aurors. To his immense relief, the honor guard does not include the brown-haired one who hates him, but a pair who are actually the least surly of the lot—a man and a woman.

Granger tells him they've been selected on the basis of their ability to pass as Muggles and their inclination for long walks. Speaking of which, he needs to pick out some clothes for the outing. He frowns. He has a winter cloak and robes—

No, that's not acceptable, apparently. He's expected to look like a Muggle. And Neville, apparently, has a whole wardrobe full of Mugglish things he could borrow. He takes a brief look and shakes his head. Neville's clothes look lumpy even on him, jeans and rugby shirts and jumpers, and no amount of transfiguration and tweaking is going to make them look even marginally acceptable. Draco is not going out looking like that. Full stop.

Granger goes into her room, and returns with a pile of clothes that she throws on Neville's bed. "Try these," she says.

He rummages among the pile. They're much closer to his size, and some of them are recognizably Muggle men's clothes, so far as he can tell from what he saw in Neville's collection. He finds a black tunic made of something elegant and soft, and a black garment that apparently goes with it, and shrugs out of his robes to try them on. Granger turns her back, facing the fireplace, apparently to respect his modesty, which amuses him, given that she already has seen everything there is to see.

He stands back from the mirror. The black sets off his paleness to perfection; it must have a slight tilt to the green because he looks luminous rather than sallow.

He turns to see Granger looking at him, and he can tell from the way her eyes darken that she likes what she sees. She's looking at his bare legs in fascination.

"You can't wear that," she says, after a considerable pause.

"And why not, Granger? There are dashing young fellows in paintings all over Hogwarts wearing this very thing, or something not too different." Yes, he does have rather nice legs; Pansy always told him he looked quite fanciable in Quidditch gear. He turns in front of the mirror to admire the back view. He will need hose with this, which he didn't see in the pile.

"That was the fourteenth century, Malfoy. You can't walk out into central London dressed like that." She pauses, still staring at his legs. Licks her lips. Oh yes, she likes what she sees. He will have to remember that. "And you'll freeze, with bare legs."

He turns to lean in toward the mirror, stroking the fabric of the tunic. It's elegant stuff, and he's more than a little surprised that Granger even owns something like this. He's never seen her wear it. "No, you will not get me out of _this,_" he says.

"All right," she says. "But you have to lose the skirt."

He gives her his most fetching come-hither expression, reaches behind to find the talon of the zipper, and pulls it down as slowly as he can. Muggle clothes have their possibilities for enticement, too. She loses patience and throws a pair of jeans at him.

"You're wearing these. Not negotiable." Then she goes into Neville's study and tells him, "Your turn. You get to tell him about warm underthings and socks. And sensible shoes. I've done my duty."

He hears Neville laugh and put down his book. Granger adds, "He's impossible."

Neville replies, "Oh, not impossible. Merely difficult."

He looks over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of them; Granger has her hand on Neville's shoulder and she's leaning in close. He's struck by how much they look like a couple, and how the exasperation sounds like two parents talking about their child.

***

The expedition has very official approval. The next morning after breakfast and a last altercation about what he'll wear (he refuses the ugly Muggle shoes in favor of his own boots), they go up the staircase to the Headmistress's office and step through the Floo, one of the Aurors preceding them and the other bringing up the rear. Twelve Grimmauld Place, rather than the public Floo at the Leaky Cauldron. Great-Aunt Walburga's house.

They don't linger there long, but troop out of the kitchen to the entrance hall and thence to the front steps onto Grimmauld Place.

After the fact, the walking tour runs together in his mind. They get on and off Muggle conveyances that are crowded with a variety of human animals and their smells—tobacco smoke, curry, leather, damp wool, unwashed clothes, perfumes beyond counting. They walk along an embankment on the river—that would be the Thames—and the two of them get excited pointing out landmarks. Neither of them is a Londoner. Granger is quite clear on that; her parents live—lived—in one of the suburbs. Neville hails from Lancashire, as if you couldn't tell that from his accent. They argue about what to show him—the Tate? The National Gallery? "Oh no, he won't like that. Muggle pictures don't move." (Granger's tone is dismissive, and he bristles even though she's absolutely right; he's not interested in seeing more of the weird static pictures that Muggles make. The one on her wall is unnerving enough.)

What he can't believe is how many Muggles there are. Crowds of them stream by as they're gawking at the Houses of Parliament. Big Muggles, little ones, thin ones, fat ones, in a whole range of colors— blue-black, deep brown, olive, rosy, freckled, pale—and configurations—young Muggles in groups, older ones in couples, Muggle families with baby Muggles—and a staggering variety of costumes. He's dizzied by the whole thing. At first they all look alike, and then as he watches, faces come into focus, mostly unfamiliar and _each one different_. Once in a while, he thinks he sees a face he recognizes—a ginger who might be a Weasley, a blond who looks like his father, a girl with straight black hair who looks like Chang—but on closer examination, they're someone else.

He'd had a vague idea that Muggles were a sort of homogeneous mass. And now he's seen more of them than he's ever seen individuals of any description in the wizarding world—maybe more than he saw at the Quidditch World Cup?—and from what Granger is saying, this is only a tiny part of the London they have made. There are streets upon streets. She unfolds her map to show him. It goes on for miles in all directions, and it's entirely inhabited by people without magic.

They walk him down streets with Muggle shops whose fronts are all glass, with all manner of artfully lit goods inside—clothes and jewelry (the styles are quite different but the articles, at least, he recognizes) and then wholly alien artifacts: odd little silvery things in a variety of shapes and sizes; boxes with colorful moving images that at first he thinks are paintings, except that the images change frantically.

At some point, the grey overcast afternoon starts producing a damp mist and then a sort of peevishly spitting wet, somewhere between rain and snow. "Muggle weather," he mutters, and they laugh at him. Can't help themselves—the idea that Muggles have separate weather. Fifteen minutes later, Neville is still producing the occasional giggle and repeating, "Muggle weather," until Granger says, "Oh, Neville. Be nice. It's an understandable misconception," which annoys him even more.

At the third hour, his feet are sore and his patience is wearing thin. Muggles apparently have nothing like the Knight Bus or the Floo to get you from one place to the next; whether on foot or in one of their conveyances, you have to traverse every point in between. Alphabetical order is no guide to how close your destination is. And he's feeling disagreeable, because none of it makes sense. Granger has taken them to the banking district, which goes on for mile after mile—really excessive—and he's failing to get any kind of answer from her or Neville about how it all works. Between the lines of their conversation, he reads that Granger visits here fairly frequently.

Could that other job be in the Muggle world?

He stares at the glass monoliths that stretch so far into the sky that there's scarcely room for more than a narrow band of pearly overcast above them. It's unnerving, the idea that they've crowded out the sky. "It's a shame we can't stay after dark," Granger says. "They light it all up."

He shivers, thinking that she comes from this alien world. For the first time, he wonders if she's felt anything like the dislocation he's feeling now. Probably not. The wizarding world is human scale, and it's _normal,_ with predictable rules.

Neville and Granger agree that it's time to find hot tea and refreshments. Granger finds them a place, a little glass-fronted café that reminds him a bit of the shops in Diagon Alley, except that inside it's perfectly enormous.

However, they do have an assortment of pastries that's quite enticing, and Granger gives him carte blanche to select what he likes. She buys for the two Aurors, too, who are looking relieved to be in out of the disagreeable weather, since they've had to be discreet with Impervius charms. He's shivering, until Granger notices and does the most discreet wand-work he's yet seen—dries him and warms him—and then he's wedged warmly between her and Neville, bumping elbows with them as they drink tea.

And suddenly, it goes quite precipitously downhill—like unto dropping off a cliff.

There's a he-Muggle with a supercilious manner standing in front of their table. "Miss Granger, I presume," he says, with a slight and mocking bow. "And may I assume that these are your wizard friends?"

Granger proceeds to introduce them both to him, _by their actual names_, as if this fellow hadn't just announced that the Statute of Secrecy is a dead letter. He sees no reason to play along, not least because this Nigel fellow is taking altogether too familiar a tone with Granger, and looking at _him_ superciliously, as if there were something wrong with his clothes. He's wearing his very best cloak and the boots are finest dragon-hide. Nothing wrong with _him._ He lifts his chin and tosses his hair back, staring at the impertinent fellow and wishing very much that he could hex him.

Yes, she said something about working with him. She works with Muggles—_she has a Muggle job—_and this particular Muggle fancies her.

It's quite intolerable. And, absent a proper hexing, there's really only one answer to it.

He puts an arm around Granger, and a hand on Neville's thigh, and says in his iciest tone, "I believe that Miss Granger—_Hermione_—prefers the company of _her own kind._ As do I." Under the table, he presses his leg against hers. They belong to _him,_ both of them, and no presumptuous Muggle ought to be looking at either of them. Especially not her. Because even if she came out of their freakish world, where she _really belongs_ is with her own kind. As if it weren't perfectly self-evident: this fellow wouldn't know the correct end of a wand, let alone what to do with one.

There's a flash in the street outside that distracts the he-Muggle, in which interval Granger steps on Draco's foot, hard, and tells him to _behave,_ as if he were an unruly child.

Once the interloper is out of earshot, Neville whispers to her, "What was that? How does he know--?"

"The other kind of wizards," she said. "He means computer programmers. He's been after me for a date for simply months and I finally convinced him I didn't date bankers."

This answer appears to satisfy Neville, who relaxes visibly. Draco decides that he understands at most half of what she said. "He doesn't look like a goblin."

She doesn't bother explaining, which indicates just how annoyed she is; instead, she reproves him for his proprietary display. She doesn't appreciate his chivalry, but she does buy another round of chocolate éclairs, which he decides is nearly a substitute for appreciation. The food here is really quite acceptable. Not quite up to Hogwarts standards, but not bad.

It isn't until that night that it occurs to him that he didn't so much as think the M-word the whole day. And that he not only admitted but asserted that her place was _not_ with the Muggles. That he is _her own kind._

***

Three days after the London visit, he doesn't actually see the _Daily Prophet_ until after lunch, because there's a letter for him from Andromeda Tonks. It's nearly as vague as the one he sent, but it seems to assume that they're now corresponding regularly. Under the gracious locutions he recognizes a will as powerful as his mother's. He sighs. There's really nothing for it, if the two of them have made up their minds, any more than there would have been any hope of defying his mother and Bella.

And next time he ought to be a little more timely, he supposes. He doesn't know Andromeda Tonks, but he does know his mother, and if he imagines that last line of the letter in her voice, he's just been told that he's been remiss in his social duties and she's letting it go _this once_.

He picks up his quill to compose a reply. He doesn't want to talk about the improvement he's making in recovering his magic, because that would be admitting—in writing—that there had been something wrong in the first place. And if the letter is read by someone at the Weasley compound, then he'll be for it the next time Ron Weasley shows up for Potions revision. He left Weasley's gibe about Azkaban unanswered, much as that made his skin itch. If Weasley suspects that he did so from a position of weakness … well, he doesn't want to think about that.

He decides that he'll write about the weather—that's always safe—and the late visit to Muggle London. That will reassure her that he's getting exercise. He will not mention that he did not eat anything sensible at the cafe. (Upon thinking that thought, he realizes that he's thinking of Andromeda as a copy of his mother. But she was somebody's mother, so surely that model can't be far wrong.) He writes a little about revising for NEWTs, because he really can't say much more about Muggle London. Quite frankly, it was overwhelming. His picture of ultimate disaster has been revised substantially; he isn't thinking about them burning the Manor but overrunning it.

There are so many of them.

After he'd said that for the third time, Granger gave him a pocket lecture on the population of the wizarding world—well, wizarding Britain—which appears to be something in the neighborhood of 17,000. No more than 20,000, certainly, although she adds that these are pre-war estimates and they haven't finished counting the casualties in outlying districts.

And then she told him the full population of the British Isles. Sixty-five million. With the prim little aside that not everyone in that figure is a Muggle, because there _are_ witches and wizards who show up in the census. Neville Longbottom, for one, and his grandmother. Apparently his Gran is even registered to vote in Muggle elections (she votes Labour), and she shows up at town meetings in her mostly Muggle locality. And Granger herself, of course. She has a National Insurance Number, she says, and she's seen Neville's identification too. The real one, not the one she faked up for him so he could get a driver license at fifteen.

Draco made her write the number out just so he could be sure that's what she said: sixty-five _million._

Of whom 7.1 million live in Greater London, Granger adds.

He filed the part about Neville and his Gran, because that's a little bit more than he can comprehend just now, and he doesn't understand half of it (the elections and voting part is puzzling, and he doesn't know what a driver license is).

He shakes his head. This is getting him nowhere with finishing the letter. Oh yes, he should add that it was Neville and Granger who arranged the tour. Say something nice about them; that should help, since Andromeda is affiliated with the whole Potter-Weasley-Granger-Longbottom axis. And then he supposes he should say something about Muggles, since that's what they went there to see. Hmm. "There are so many of them." He's not going to say that he really didn't know that before, or understand it, because he doesn't need Andromeda looking askance at him; her husband was Muggle-born. Nor is he going to decorate his letter with amusing facts about Muggle demography. He will leave that sort of performance to Granger.

***

When he does see the _Daily Prophet,_ it's in McGonagall's office. She pushes the paper across her desk to him. "Before we begin, Mr. Malfoy, let me tell you that I have already met with Miss Granger and Mr. Longbottom." He's not sure what Neville and Granger have to do with this and says so.

McGonagall smiles one of those dry cold smiles he absolutely hates, because it's trouble itself, much more trouble than Snape's most imperious glare. "So I understand that you have not seen today's _Prophet._" He shakes his head slowly, frowning a little. "Do look at it, Mr. Malfoy." The small tight smile is arctic. "Take your time, and be sure to read the _lead article _in full_._ Then we can discuss what we propose to do."

Draco unfolds the paper and can't suppress a gasp of utter horror. There he is on the front page of the _Prophet, _his arm around Granger—and Merlin's balls, it looks _much_ worse than he meant it. For one, the hand with which he's squeezing her upper arm is just a little too close to her breast. For another, the glimpse of the other hand, the one on Neville's thigh, is in deep perspective and it actually looks as if he's quite a bit further up the leg than he was—or thought he was. The only good thing to be said about it is that the presumptuous he-Muggle is mostly obscuring the view of what he's doing with Neville.

He puts the newspaper down in his lap and stares at McGonagall. She's not sympathetic. "We have matters to discuss in detail about that article," she says. "I suggest you read it. And do stop gawping."

He realizes that his mouth has been hanging open this whole while, so he closes it.

He picks the newspaper and grits his teeth to read the headline article. Rita bloody Skeeter, of course.

He feels as if he's standing naked in a cold north wind, which effectively he is. Rita Skeeter has guessed—maliciously, but with utter accuracy—exactly what's going on. Granger is having an affair with him, and she's possibly also involved with Neville, and he fancies both of them. Or at least he's having sex with both of them. Of course—even daft Skeeter could piece that together, from that picture. It's not as if he'd been subtle.

He continues to read. Now she's implying that Granger protested his parents' incarceration in Azkaban _because she was sleeping with him._ No, he perfectly well knows that's not true. He was still in the hospital wing when that happened, and they were certainly far from friends at the time. And he's certainly overheard enough of her rants about the wizarding justice system since then to know it has nothing to do with him.

He says as much to McGonagall, carefully crafting the words to avoid any reference to what's going on in present tense.

McGonagall says, "Given your record, I would be much surprised if Miss Granger were in fact involved with you as Rita Skeeter claims."

Draco points to the picture and says with some pique, "She _stamped_ on my foot, right after that was taken."

McGonagall says, "Miss Granger exercised admirable restraint. Of course, given that she was in a Muggle locality, that was absolutely required." (Translation: you're lucky she didn't hex your bits off, then or on return to Hogwarts.) "Had you exercised some self-control in the first place, her action would have been completely unnecessary."

Of course. How much fairness can he expect from the erstwhile Head of Gryffindor House? How was he supposed to know that some idiot photographer from the _Prophet _was trailing them? He's thinking about how to say this in a way that doesn't sound like active whining, when McGonagall cuts in again.

"Mr. Malfoy, I think that any rejoinder of yours is completely superfluous at this juncture. Let me be candid with you. Your actions have placed your parents in deadly peril." That gets his attention. "Rita Skeeter appears to have a substantial grudge against Miss Granger, and she is not particular about whom else she damages in her campaign to discredit her. That includes her former patron. There is a faction in the Ministry that want to proceed to expropriation and execution of your father and mother, without the intermediate formality of a trial. Interestingly enough, it includes some number of your father's former allies in the Ministry."

Draco stares at the picture again, aghast. That impulse of his really was stupid, wasn't it? Not that he'll say so to McGonagall.

"However culpable your father may have been in recent events, he is being put forward as the scapegoat for policies carried out by a great many willing hands in the Ministry. Miss Granger and Healer Derwent have systematically protested this. It is not in your interest to do anything that would cast discredit on their efforts."

He feels sick now. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Continue your admirable efforts to prepare for the NEWTs. Under no circumstances contact the _Prophet _on your own initiative. That includes letters to the editor, Owls, Howlers, fire-calls, and the like. I am working with Healer Derwent and Mrs. Longbottom to get this situation resolved, and we will be involving Minister Shacklebolt. I cannot sufficiently stress how delicate a matter this is. If we need you to speak to the press, you will be thoroughly briefed in advance. And if you receive _any_ overtures whatsoever from Skeeter or anyone else on the _Prophet, _they are to be referred to me. Is that understood?"

He nods.

"Regrettably, you have lost visiting privileges to Hogsmeade for the foreseeable future. We are considering whether you should be permitted to continue the flying tutorials with Miss Granger, given the rumors of your involvement with her. Your tutorial with Mr. Longbottom will continue, as we do not have an appropriately qualified tutor to replace him under current circumstances."

He leans forward, head in hands. The more he thinks about this, the sicker he feels. He rather wishes the Headmistress had summoned him to her office before lunch rather than after, because the meal is not sitting too well on his stomach just now.

***


	12. Chapter 12

**Disclaimer:** I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

***

Things go from bad to worse. After his summons to McGonagall's office, he gets another summons, this time from Granger. They _need to talk_, her note says, and it gives him a place and time. And then it promptly dissolves into smoke. Oh, she's taking no chances with the infamous Malfoy penchant for blackmail, he can see. He's for it, all right. _And deserves it,_ seconds a voice in his head that sounds remarkably like the Headmistress.

He can imagine what she's going to say. No, on second thought, he only has a possible list of topics, none of which are good news. Well, there is something for that. He does have a handful of things in his arsenal, for all that he's in complete disgrace with everyone. He knows that, because the tutorial with Longbottom was _thoroughly professional,_ and conducted at ten paces. And they're Longbottom and Malfoy, now. He's been shut out. Longbottom isn't going to touch him, unless it's at a distance of half the room, and with fireproof tongs.

That ensemble that she really likes is still in his possession, somehow. He puts it on—the black tunic and the very short black straight skirt—and then his school robes on top of it. From his extensive observation on the London streets, he gathers that in the last six hundred years, it's changed genders. He knows that it's deadly wrong but still attractive, and that had best be his look. It seemed to fix her attention, and he's going to need all the help he can get in distracting her.

They're actually meeting on her ground. She's done something with the room defenses; the Floo is still blocked off, but the room actually lets him walk in. She greets him and turns to prepare tea. While she's waving her wand over the kettle to make it steam, he closes the door, unfastens his robes, and slides them off. When she turns to hand him a cup of tea, he's standing before her dressed just as she liked before. Seduction itself.

She isn't particularly well-defended on that side, not having had much in the way of seduction attempts in past. (He conjectures that Weasley never went to trouble. McLaggen looks to have been simply a lout, and Krum was so enamored that he could barely remember his English.) He smiles and says something about making it up to her.

She tries to start a _reasonable conversation,_ but he steps forward and kisses her, and then says he's going to apologize. What he did was inexcusable, but he's going to make it up to her on bended knee. He takes the teacup out of her hand and sets it down on the desk, and moves in on her until she's leaning backward against the desk.

She doesn't protest overmuch when he kisses his way down to her belly and unzips her jeans. She altogether ceases making sense at all (that's good) once he's started doing what he learned so well from Granger herself and from the mystery girl, Granger's dead lover. The stone floor is cold, and it hurts his knees but he figures he's a penitent anyway, right? And this is not about his discomfort, but about putting in her a better frame of mind.

He never would have thought of using Polyjuice that way. Well, Granger has a subtle and perverse mind, which is actually quite attractive, and she also has what he's decided is a quite admirable lack of scruple when it comes to getting what she wants. Which appears to be working in his favor just now. She likes what he's doing.

Yes, she likes it very much, to judge from the way she's moving.

The only problem is that at the end, she calls him by the wrong name. No mistaking it, either. "Tonks."

He already has a horrible suspicion.

"You called me by the wrong name."

He asks her, already half suspecting the answer, "Who is Tonks?" Because there's Andromeda Tonks, who is very much alive, and then there's Andromeda's daughter, who's dead, and he knows who killed her—or at least who got the assignment to do so. And Tonks is not a wizarding surname, so there aren't any other candidates.

"Why did you think you needed to bribe me with sex?"

Oh, clever, Granger. Answer a question with a question.

"It's the standard reward for rescuing the damsel in distress. I assume it also applies to the handsome prince." He smirks, because that's as much of an answer as that question is going to get as long as she refuses him an answer to his.

"Neville and I did it on principle," she said. "Just as I gave the Ministry trouble about Azkaban on principle. Just as I made the ruckus about the house elves on principle. And you knew that."

"So virtue is rewarded, Granger. I didn't hear you complaining just now. And I'm not complaining either." He looks down, pinches the bridge of his nose, then looks up at her, and the words escape him before he even thinks to hold them back. "Even if you like it best when I'm someone else."

"This arrangement … it's a big complication. Politically and otherwise." She's thinking, damn her, and he can feel a whole unspoken paragraph in the pause that follows, and he can well imagine what's in it. He's never felt so bleak or icy in his life. A complication. Here he was thinking she was being discreet and it turns out that she's embarrassed by him.

"Thanks a lot. It's _so_ reassuring to be someone's _complication._" He pauses, thinking about where he's going to be in a few months, and he feels so sorry for himself he could cry, but he won't give her the satisfaction. "At least that thought won't be food for the Dementors."

She blurts out, "And what about Neville? Because to be blunt, there are some things about your technique that suggest you did your practice run with a man. And he's my friend…"

Only a Gryffindor could twist jealousy around into the shape of noble indignation on behalf of a _friend_. Bloody hypocrite. And he's lost that one, too, hasn't he? Longbottom won't be speaking to him ever again, not unless it's official. He doesn't understand how so much can have come apart in the course of a mere twenty-four hours.

"Your _friend._ You're so bloody disinterested, aren't you? You just want to _save him_ from the dirty likes of me. That's why you spent an hour fucking him senseless and saying _'Oh, Neville!'_" She winces. He's playing dirty and knows it. It's going to be over in a minute or two, so it doesn't matter. May as well say it all now, since he's lost both of them. "Only it wasn't him, it was me. And when the Polyjuice wore off, and it was rotten Malfoy again, I could _see_ how disappointed you were."

He feels the skin on his face tighten as he glares at her. Please let tears not come; it feels so much more comfortable to be attacking, and damn her, he _will_ have an answer. "And who the hell is Tonks? Because that name is familiar…"

Her eyes flash fury and she's shouting, "You inbreds don't keep track, do you? Blast somebody off the family tapestry and they're gone. Blast them off the face of the earth and forget their bloody name."

"What did you call me, Granger?"

"Oh come on, Malfoy, why don't you call _me_ what you've been thinking all along? Do you think I don't catch you almost saying it? As if I didn't know your lot wanted me dead. As if I'm ever going to be able to forget it."

It hasn't done any good, has it? It's not his fault if he was raised with that word, and if truth be told, cherished it as a weapon these many years. He feels cold all over and he's biting his lips. He glares at her. It's all over. And there's nothing he can do about it. And he'd best not make her lose her temper, because she's got a wand and he hasn't. Even if he had brought it with him, it's not as if a feeble _Lumos_ is going to help him against what she could hurl at him.

She closes her eyes and takes a breath before she speaks.

"Malfoy, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

Well, that's a first. He would never have expected Granger to admit she was wrong about anything.

"I shouldn't have called you an inbred. I don't even _believe_ blood status means anything, and I was the one who asked for no more insults." There's another pause, and she adds, "And I shouldn't have taunted you." And then, in a very soft voice, almost tender, she says, "And I'm sorry I called you by the wrong name. That's inexcusable."

Then she looks at him, and confirms it. "Tonks was your cousin. The one who married Remus Lupin. The one that Bellatrix killed." There are tears in her eyes. "You know, we never did… She wasn't ever my lover in life. I don't think she even knew how I felt. Or if she did, I was just a kid with a crush on her."

He licks his lips, and swallows. Somehow that hurts even more than the idea she used him to resurrect a lost lover.

"Like you with the portrait-girl." She looks at him with a tiny smile, as if actually seeing something she might like. "With Emily." A pause, and then she adds, "And I'm sorry that I treated you better when you were being Neville."

He looks at her. May as well say it aloud, because everybody knows it. "You're in love with Neville."

Unbelievably, she looks astonished. No one can possibly be this thick, or fail to know that her face is an utterly truthful transcript of her every thought. If ever there was someone in desperate need of Occlumency, it's Granger.

He says with some irritation, "And I would know even without the Polyjuice. I can see the way you look at him. I bet everybody can see it. Probably even Potter has a clue."

She looks stricken, as if expecting a blow. It would be so easy to tell her that Longbottom doesn't like her, except that's just the sort of thing she expects from him. And she'll find out the contrary soon enough, because he has a good guess that Longbottom will be declaring himself soon, now that his dirty little secret is safely out of the way. He _really_ doesn't need her as an enemy. May as well do his rival and ex-lover full justice. And there is that small matter of the life debt.

"I thought Longbottom was such a duffer, for years and years. Never could understand why you kept saving him from himself. And this year he and the Weaselette and Loony were just suicidally stupid. I honestly didn't think they were going to live out the year. Forget that. I didn't think _I_ was going to live out the year." He shakes his head. "And then he kills the damned snake. You cannot _imagine_ how much I hated that snake." She shudders involuntarily, and he remembers that _she_ has nightmares about the snake. "And then he saves me from those little monsters, and patches me up, and makes a fuss with McGonagall about keeping me safe. I heard him. He's impressive when he decides to be. And then he keeps visiting me in the hospital wing as if I were his long-lost brother and not some Death Eater slime."

"Not bad, for somebody you bullied every chance you got."

"I know." He looks at her. "And you're not bad either, considering what I've said to you. And done, when I could get away with it. Or worse, _not done_ when I should have. Even if I still have no clue as to what I could have done without getting killed, because by the time I had the thought it was too fucking late."

She looks at him and nods.

"So the duffer and the bushy-haired one are my knights in shining armor. And Potty and the Weasel. Not at _all_ how I thought any of this would turn out." He laughs, remembering the daydreams he had about how it was all going to end happily with his father and the Dark Lord in charge—and just how well that worked out in practice.

She persists, "So are you doing something with Neville? Because you are _rather skilled _ in a certain department and it gives me the suspicion you've had a lot of recent practice."

Granger _knows,_ or she wouldn't be asking that way.

"I think you know the answer to that. And thank you for the compliment. I do try."

She looks at him. "And what you asked me to do, he refused you."

May as well confess, since she's either guessed it or had the whole story from Longbottom. "He didn't think it was a good idea. I think I understand why, now. Not that I didn't thoroughly enjoy it when you did it. You were _scary._ But that's what I was raised to admire: the capably ferocious and ferociously capable. And the wild, and the Dark. Raw power. Which you have in abundance."

She falls silent, and he realizes that he's just compared her to Bellatrix Lestrange. Not in so many words, but she can't miss the implication, and in her world, that's not a compliment.

He continues, "And you know that I have none, or almost none, so it surprised me that you wanted me at all. I'm scarcely _normal _any more." It isn't until the words are out of his mouth that he realizes how abject that sounds.

"Where I come from, you're still privileged. You can fly." She actually smiles as she says, "I think we're both intrigued by the exotic. We admitted as much on Halloween night."

"Do I look like her in these clothes?" Except for the picture of the Auror in tattered jeans and the skinny little girl, he has no idea what she looked like, and anyway, she was a shape-shifter.

"No. But you do look disturbingly attractive. As yourself. Scary though that is to contemplate." Then quite unexpectedly, she takes him in her arms and draws him down on the bed. She kisses him on the neck and caresses him through the delicious fabric of the tunic. "You look better in those things than I ever could." Strokes his hair, which relaxes him in spite of himself; she knows that's something he likes. It's him she's touching. Him, not the heroic dead Auror on whom she had a hopeless crush, or Longbottom. She's tracing his ribcage, his collarbones, the line of his jaw; every caress says, _this,_ says, _here and now,_ says, _you, not someone else._ And she's looking right at him, without rancor, not in challenge but in recognition.

Then she says, with unexpected tenderness, "Draco, you are extraordinarily stupid and impulsive." Calmly, as if merely stating facts. "You may have hung us all. All for the sake of ticking off Nigel, who _really_ isn't worth that kind of trouble."

As it happens, she's more right than she knows.

***

Thursday night. There's a routine to Thursday nights, which has worked out over the course of the last few months. On the second and fourth Thursdays of the month, Longbottom leaves after his last class in the greenhouse, about four o'clock, and goes to late night visiting hours at St. Mungo's, and from there to his Gran's, to return mid-morning on Friday. Granger is never on the castle grounds on Thursday nights, since she's "off site," likely in that Muggle house, and then at the Muggle job. He's heard her complaining to Longbottom about tedious Friday meetings that don't sound as if they're at the Ministry, because she uses a shocking amount of Muggle-speak in talking about what goes on. May as well be speaking Mermish for all the sense he gets from it.

He's surprised to hear footsteps outside his door at five o'clock on the second Thursday of December. He doesn't think, and opens the door, for which he will curse himself for a very long time.

It isn't Granger. Nor Longbottom. Nor, for that matter, anyone he wanted to see on a Thursday night or any time.

Twelve little Hufflepuff faces, one of whom he recognizes all too well: sea green eyes and reddish hair. She's taller than she was in May, but still quite recognizably the same little girl who led the attack on him then. Five of them get between him and the door almost immediately, cutting off escape, and the other seven seize him bodily and drag him out into the hall.

There seems to be complete agreement this time about what's going to happen. No arguing about what they're going to do to him. Bloody Hufflepuffs and their consensus; he'll bet the last knut in the family vault that they've talked this one over, and rehearsed.

Seven of them are holding him down, and one of them is yanking quite unnecessarily hard on his hair, so that his eyes water. The ringleader and her four lieutenants are looking down at him. She says in her still childish voice, "It seems the Auror didn't show up." Smiles. "And no one is going to be opening that door till morning. Mr. Longbottom doesn't come back until ten o'clock in the morning."

One of the boys continues, "It's five o'clock now, so that's seventeen hours." He smirks. "You can get a bit of work done in seventeen hours."

He has a good idea of what kind of work they have in mind, and flinches.

"Coward," another boy says, "we haven't even touched you yet."

"No," the girl says, "this time it's not about touching. In fact, by the time we're done, nobody's going to want to touch you. They'll be putting on gloves to haul you away. What's left of you."

She smiles, and she looks just like Bella. Bella on the battlefield, taunting Molly Weasley. Bella at her ease, full of the joy of power, with an easy victim close to hand.

"Like Mr. Longbottom's parents," she says. "And we're going to settle the score on that one _right now._"

There's barely a breath before the first _Crucio_ hits him.

Everyone says the pain is indescribable. They're right. It's an eternity of pain, pain stretched out to the far corners of the world, pain inescapable. His body thrashes, trying to get away from the hot irons, the toothache, whatever it is—and fails, of course, because it's his own nervous system generating that. He doesn't feel it when his head hits the wall or his shoulder nearly dislocates trying to wrench free from the thing burning him.

Nor does he hear himself screaming until he's released from the spell and his voice is still reacting to the pain. It's inhumanly high, not his voice at all but a crushed animal in its last agony.

"Coward," says the boy who said it before. The brat doesn't know what he's talking about. _Everybody_ screams under Cruciatus. Dolohov and Rowle did, his father did, Granger did. Not to mention Yaxley and Snape and everybody else that the Dark Lord tortured.

He's drenched in sweat, gasping in relief. Who knew how close to pleasure the absence of pain could be?

The girl looks down at him and smiles. "We're well trained," she says. "The Carrows did a very thorough job with us, they did. Thanks to your lot."

He knows he shouldn't ask, but this makes no bloody sense. "Why are you doing this?"

She smiles and says, "What's your name?" He stares at her, and suddenly the agony surges through him again. As abruptly, it cuts off. He'd heard neither the second _Crucio _nor the _Finite Incantatem._ "Your name," she says.

He swallows and says, "Draco Malfoy."

She smiles, all sweetness and light. "Well, there's your reason." The resemblance to Bella isn't in features or voice, but in the sense of _no limits, _the pleasure of knowing that one isn't going to stop at any of the usual barriers.

They hit him with it again.

He comes back to himself, and they let him rest.

He recognizes the rhythm; they're leaving a wait between bouts so that he has time to dread the next one, and to feel what the absence of pain is. He tries not to shiver, but it's impossible; his whole body is trembling. The boy who called him coward laughs.

He knows that it never mattered what Bella's victims did. Whether they were stoic or they broke down in tears and screaming, she took them all to the same place in the end, and it wasn't a matter of their will, but hers, when she administered the death-blow, though she did enjoy withholding it when they begged for it.

Except that none of these children have learned the Killing Curse. They were only teaching that to the sixth- and seventh-years. So they're not going to kill him, unless they do it by non-magical means, or by some chain of events that ends up killing him.

"It's only five-thirty," says another boy, making a great show of checking his watch.

"And we're going to take turns," says one of the ones holding him down. "So nobody's going to get tired." Adds, "Some of us skived off class with Mr. Longbottom and slept all day. We wanted to be sure we'd make it all night."

He's just registered the significance of that when the torture curse hits him again.

When the pain recedes this time he's shaking uncontrollably, and he makes the mistake of thinking about his mother. That makes tears start into his eyes, not for his pain but for hers. What she'll think when they find the wrecked shell in the morning. He wishes he didn't remember Bella's lovingly detailed narrative of the torture of Frank and Alice Longbottom. Three torturers, two victims, and they had most of a night. When the Aurors found them, there wasn't anything human left…

He blinks so they don't see the tears, because that will set them off the same way that his blood did. He just knows that. He remembers that. He knows it from the other side of the transaction.

_But I never meant to torture anybody…_

No, but he does know about inflicting pain, and somehow it's worse to know this when he's lying on the floor staring up at the circle of twelve that has him at their mercy.

And part of the game was humiliation. He'd already known about reducing victims to tears, but Bella told him about piss and shit and letting them lie there in it; it was she who told them how they'd take turns torturing one of the pair, as the other watched and listened, helpless to intervene…

Gods, why did he ever listen to that poisonous stuff? He's shaking, too, thinking about how much of that script the Carrows conveyed to their students without ever teaching it formally. Gods. Except there are no gods; it's just an expression. And Merlin is dead. Circe. Nimue. Anyone he might call on; it's just rhetoric. Noise. Something to say.

Sometimes, at the end, they'd be screaming for their mothers. "The last thing to go away," Bella said with a dark smile. "They still think mama is going to come for them and save them from the big bad witch." She'd smile even wider, showing teeth, and he'd have a flash of what it was the Muggles must fear.

Hold off crying as long as he can, he thinks. And that will buy him what? A little reprieve from frenzy, but will it matter? Seventeen hours under Cruciatus is eternity. Bella again, damn her to hell: she and Rodolphus and Barty destroyed the Longbottoms in well under eight hours. That was with taking turns, and all of the psychological torture in between. If the parents were anything like the son, they were bloody tough. Disassembling Frank and Alice would not have been easy. Whereas he…

He's a dead man. Or worse than dead. He wishes he could manage a wandless _Avada--_on himself—or that Granger had killed him in the hospital wing after all. Granger.

"Don't you dare say her name," the girl says. And the next bout begins.

An eternity of pain.

He doesn't even feel the minor pain where he's thrashed against the wall. His clothes are sticking to him, and he can smell the stink of sweat. Fear. Pain. The stench of a sickbed or a dungeon. They've decided, apparently, against stripping him this time, because his own clothes are going to be disgusting enough by the time they're done with him. _No, do not think about that. Keep the mind blank._ _Breathe._ He's very carefully breathing when the next bout hits him.

It lasts forever, wavers in the middle, then drops out in a brief _Finite._ Takes up again—_Crucio,_ but this time in a different voice. Ye gods, they're working in shifts. It's not going to let up. His torturer has the strength of twelve. Twelve against one, and that one helpless… His scream chokes off in a sob. He tries to calm himself down, but his breathing is working against him—great gulps of air and weeping that racks his chest.

"No one's coming for you," said the girl's voice. "We're going to have you all night." _Don't let them have any respite. Remind them of their helpless position._

He never understood why the victims begged, because it didn't make any difference, but he hears his voice, scarcely above a whisper, say "… please don't…" He's thinking about how he's going to die here in this dank hallway, mere feet from the place where he thought himself safe, unknown to anyone who cares for him.

"Oh no," said one of the boys. "You don't get to ask for anything. _Crucio!_"

When it ends this time, he can't help himself, and lies there against the wall, weeping and choking.

The children laugh. "Well, it wasn't hard to make him cry," the ringleader says. "How many more before he shits himself?"

He curses himself for showing weakness too soon, because now they're heading into the second stage of physical humiliation. There are refinements, too, which they will have the leisure to discover.

And then he's quite sure he's hallucinating, because a silvery creature with a playful face and shining eyes swims gracefully across his field of vision, and a voice he thought he'd never hear again says urgently, "Apprentices' corridor, at least ten of them, they're casting Crucio on Malfoy, come in with backup." Bloody hell. Granger.

The silvery illusion does a back-flip and swims away through the wall.

If he's not hallucinating this, he swears he will never call her voice annoying again. Ever.

And there's Neville bloody Longbottom charging in and telling them that they don't do that to anybody, ever. No, he's not hallucinating. It's Longbottom, with his hair clotted with snow—did the duffer never hear of an Impervius Charm?

Granger is covering him—him and Longbottom—and she's casting a shield charm on him. A good one, too, by the shimmer of it; he can barely see what's going on more than a foot ahead of him. Typical Granger: hit any problem with five times the firepower needed.

And that little shyster of a Hufflepuff girl is arguing that Harry Potter cast Crucio on the Carrows and _he_ has the Order of Merlin, and anyway Malfoy is theirs by right, because of what the Death Eaters did to their parents, and what the Carrrows did to them, and then there's Crabbe and Goyle.

Longbottom is squatting down on hunkers now, wand still out, and conducting a bloody seminar on the ethics of revenge with the little bastards. Amazing cheek, they have; they're arguing with him, but nobody's tried to cast another _Crucio,_ and anyway Granger is watching them like a hawk. She's in relaxed but unmistakable combat stance. Anybody that takes a threatening step is going to get it from her.

Longbottom is being sweet reason, and Granger is the threat of raw force. Good cop, bad cop. Rather masterful, in fact. The Aurors should have recruited the two of them.

Longbottom is saying, "All right, let's talk about revenge. Do you know what happened to my parents?"

_Six hundred points to Gryffindor for sheer unadulterated guts. No elephants in the parlor for Longbottom._

One of the children volunteers, "Death Eaters got 'em."

"What else do you know?"

_How many points to Hufflepuff if the little buggers get it right?_

The ringleader volunteers, "It was Bellatrix Lestrange did it." She jerks her head to indicate Draco. "His aunt."

Longbottom says, "Right in one. And I was on my way tonight to see them. They've never recognized me, and I've been visiting them like that all my life."

There's a long pause. Twelve pairs of little predator eyes are darting back and forth from him to Longbottom.

He wonders if Longbottom and Granger will be able to take them if they decide to attack. Granger is standing off to the side; they'll have to divide forces to attack, and Granger isn't taking her eyes off them.

"All my life. If anybody has a 'right of revenge,' I do. But he's not his aunt. Or his father, or his mother. He didn't do that to them."

The girl doesn't relent. "_They_ did it to _us_. Lots. And they laughed. We're just paying it back." Her voice goes up in annoyance. "You know. You were there. And you're going to let him go free? We don't have _anything_ left."

"Wilhelmina." His voice is very gentle now. "He didn't do that to you."

She answers, "Crabbe and Goyle. But they were _his._ And he was a _prefect. _And everybody knows that the bloody Malfoys get away with bloody everything. It's not fair. You _sit_ with him." There's a pause, and then she points to Granger. "And Rita Skeeter in the _Prophet_ says _she's_ sleeping with him. And maybe you too."

The others chime in with additional imprecations against his family name, and details from Skeeter's article, which drown out the entrance of Headmistress McGonagall, flanked by two Aurors.

"That will be enough," she says. "You are coming to my office. Now."

Reluctantly they lower their wands.

McGonagall holds out her hand. "Your wands."

They file by her and hand them to her. She nods to the Aurors. "Please accompany them to my office. I will be along momentarily."

McGonagall is fairly amazing too. He supposes that's a prerequisite for running a school, being able to put down insurrections with a glance. He will never say a bad word against McGonagall again, even if she does chill his blood.

There's a quick muttered conference between McGonagall, Granger and Longbottom, and then he's being lifted between the two of them—_Mobilicorpus,_ this time, rather than Muggle-style—and they're walking him to the hospital wing. Once there, Madam Pomfrey examines him, heals the contusions where he thrashed against the wall, and declares him otherwise healthy, for someone who's been under Cruciatus for the better part of an hour.

He learns that he was saved, as it happens, by Neville Longbottom's eternal forgetfulness and Mugglish ways. Neville had forgotten a book he'd meant to study overnight at his Gran's, and rather than Summon it, he and Granger hiked back to the castle, in an ever-thickening snowstorm, to retrieve it from Neville's rooms.

And yes, he's Neville, because he can't but be on a first name basis with someone who so gently takes off his filthy clothes and bathes the wretched sweat from his body, and dresses him again in the softest thing he can find. His best dress robes, as it happens. The ones he wore Halloween night. And then Granger drapes his heaviest travel cloak on top of that, because it's cold in here, as he shivers in the ice palace of utter abandon and terror, thinking about what could have happened, what almost certainly would have happened had they not intervened.

Granger's voice above him is sharp with indignation. "I _know_ she did it," she's saying to Neville. "Ten Galleons says that if they check the duty roster, they'll find her damned name on it. Someone was supposed to be there and wasn't, and this thing smells _planned_. I should have told McGonagall before, what she was saying three weeks ago when we went to Hogsmeade. She was on the whole time about his family. Including Ginny Weasley wanting to kill Lucius by slow torture. And how half the Auror Department wants to revive Bellatrix by Necromancy and torture her, too, because of your parents and Tonks. And she all but called Narcissa a whore. I really hate it when _witches_ go on that way about their own. Pure sexism." She stops to catch her breath. "She was saying something nasty to him that day I had the broom accident. Had him on the ground and she'd just kicked him in the ankle. I saw it, and she was muttering something and he looked scared."

They're packing his things. He's going to be moving. No more room at Hogwarts; they've decided it's too dangerous.

But where is it that's safer than Hogwarts?

Neville has his overnight things and Granger has gone back to her rooms to collect hers. They're going to accompany him there and get him settled and stay overnight.

Where?

"Longbottom House, Roughlee-in-Pendle, Lancashire," Neville announces, as he steps into the Floo in the Headmistress's office. Once Neville is gone, Granger takes his arm and they step through together as she announces the same destination. The usual dizzying whirl of other hearths goes by in the darkness, and they stumble out of a huge fieldstone fireplace into a cavernous kitchen.

A voice at least as dry as McGonagall's, except the accent is Lancashire rather than Scots, greets them.

"Well, easier than the last emergency. At least this one's not a toddler."

Neville steps back into the Floo and returns a second time with Draco's school trunk, broom, and Potions cauldron. Draco sits down in one of the straight wooden chairs in Gran's kitchen and shivers. Granger rubs his arms through his heavy cloak.

"Good work, lass," Neville's Gran says to Granger. "You'd have made quite an Auror, if Minerva McGonagall is to be trusted." Which Draco guesses is the very Olympus of compliments from Mrs. Longbottom.

The three of them accompany him upstairs, and Neville sits at the edge of the bed to give him the cup of Dreamless Sleep. Before he slips into the darkness, he's quite sure he feels someone kiss him on the forehead.

***


	13. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer:** I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

***

The next morning, he wakes in soft diffuse snowlight under warm covers. There's a smell of coffee and something savory. Someone knocks on the bedroom door and inquires if he's awake and decent, and when he says he supposes so, a head pokes in. Much too much wild curly hair. Granger. She smiles and sits down by the bedside and offers him a cup. "I didn't remember if you drank coffee," she says, as he accepts it and curls his hands around it, warming them.

He tastes it and makes a wry face.

"Sugar," she says, "and I suppose cream as well?" He nods.

"Well, you'll have to come downstairs," she says. He glances at the clock behind her. Nine o'clock. Suddenly he remembers where and _what _he would be right now, except for her and Neville's timely return… and his hands shake, and the coffee sloshes over the rim of the cup.

She takes it away from him and sets it on the bedside table. He's cold, cold to the bone, shaking uncontrollably. She sits down next to him and casts a warming charm on him. It helps only somewhat, but he gives her a wan shaky smile. "It's nine o'clock," he says, trying to explain. "They said… no one would be back until ten. That they'd have me all night…" His jaw is quivering too hard for him to continue talking.

She takes the cloak off the peg on the back of the door and drapes it over his shoulders as he sits up in bed. "You're safe," she says. "Now that You-Know-Who has bowed out, Neville's Gran is the scariest person in wizarding Britain. She won't let a soul touch you."

He pulls the cloak around him and tries to stop shaking.

"I thought you had to be … somewhere," he says.

"I called in," she says. "Family emergency. I haven't called in the whole six months I've worked there." He frowns, not sure of what she means. "Mrs. Longbottom has a telephone," she says. He shakes his head. "Muggle stuff," she says. "Don't worry. I told them a lie that's close enough to the truth."

"Where's Neville?"

"Downstairs, eating breakfast with his Gran." She smiles. "He's lying in wait to feed you up. Buttered eggs and black puddings, if your stomach is equal to that." She sighs. "The Longbottom family philosophy appears to be that anything can be faced on a solid northern breakfast."

***

When he comes downstairs, the three of them are in the midst of a family council or political argument at the table. He walks in to hear Granger saying, "… not reasonable to talk about sending twelve-year-olds to Azkaban. There has to be something else, but they can't just leave this standing."

Neville replies, "Well, it's not as if they've ever drawn the line on bullying at Hogwarts."

Gran says that the Unforgivables ought to be that line. And she's deeply disturbed to hear Hermione's report of the loose talk at the Auror office, and how her son's name is being invoked to justify torture.

The conversation comes to a dead stop as he walks in. He bows to Mrs. Longbottom. "Thank you for your hospitality," he says.

What he doesn't say to Neville and to Granger, but which hangs heavy in the room: _and my life. Again._

He sits, and Neville passes all of the dishes in his direction, and looks at him as if his thinness were a personal reproach. He didn't think he'd have an appetite, but the food is delicious, and he keeps remembering that he's alive, that he's been resurrected, that he did not in fact go mad or die under torture in the dark watches of the night. Granger smiles for some reason as he puts sugar and cream in the coffee. (He can almost hear her saying, "Rather a lot of sugar, Malfoy. Aren't you worried about rotting your teeth?") Neville watches him eat buttered eggs. Sweet coffee and buttered eggs don't exist in the world in which he died last night. They belong to the resurrected world, to this foggy snowbound morning in Lancashire, where the fire crackles in the hearth and forks click against earthenware plates.

***

No one in Draco's family is as old as Neville's Gran. His father, who once looked like a pillar of the world, is only in his mid-forties. The grandfather who died when he was a small child was in his sixties or seventies at most, and would be the age of the Headmistress.

Gran—Mrs. Longbottom—is a contemporary of his great-grandfather Apollonius, the one who disappeared in Central Europe in the time of Grindelwald. He listens carefully and learns that she was a schoolmate of Horace Slughorn. He frowns, because she doesn't look as old as he does. Her hair is iron-grey, not white; she's lean and sharp where Slughorn is plump and well-upholstered. In some ways she seems younger than the Potions master, and in others much older. She radiates the sense of a person grown immeasurably far from the passions of the living world. Slughorn still slides sidelong looks at young men; Draco has seen that. Not that any of those looks stuck to him, because Slughorn's favored type is fair-skinned but dark-haired.

He watches her warily. After all, he's involuntarily accepted the hospitality of the mother of his aunt's best-known victim. After a while, it becomes clear that Augusta Longbottom will not murder him under her roof, because she holds fiercely and archaically to the sacred duty of hospitality. She's ferociously upright, what Granger would be in eighty years if … well, if she got a great deal older and less passionate. _Passionate._ That's an embarrassing word to use about someone he used to despise on principle.

Used to. In the life before. In his mind, time branches. Down one branch, there's a mostly dead body lying in a hallway at Hogwarts, whose name used to be Draco Malfoy and which does not answer to that name or to any human word ever again. That body was young and resilient if not strong, so seventeen hours under Cruciatus did not kill it. They warehoused it in the locked ward at St. Mungo's. He doesn't know if anyone visits it.

Down the other branch of time, there's someone with the same name looking out the window of the front room at Longbottom House to the snowy rise of Pendle Hill. He doesn't owe any of the same debts as his doppelganger. He's released from anything the other one used to believe. The life he used to live ended down the other branch, he thinks. Neville and Granger didn't save his life this time so much as they derailed the flow of time.

The other Draco is dead. He's alive.

The Draco who is alive is amused by Longbottom but doesn't consider him a duffer. Yes, he came charging to the rescue with snow in his hair, but that's fine. If it weren't for Longbottom's absentmindedness and Mugglish ways, Draco would be dead. The other Longbottom, the one that never was, would have Summoned his book from outside the Hogwarts gates, or wouldn't have forgotten it in the first place. That wizard would have proceeded onward to his appointment and Draco would have died.

He swore that he wouldn't be annoyed by Granger's voice again, since it was the first thing that told him he was going to survive. He's more or less keeping his word. He actually listens to it now: it's not unpleasant, not even as high-pitched as he'd thought, but somewhere on the border between soprano and alto, a perfectly ordinary woman's voice. It hits those squeaky high notes in exasperation, and it is the voice of a vehement outsider.

It's not until the morning of his second day at Longbottom House that it occurs to him to ask why she didn't Summon the book, either. He's used to seeing her step in to help out Longbottom when he got flustered in Potions… but she didn't do that this time. It didn't occur to her to do that. She and Longbottom were looking at the question of the forgotten book in _exactly the same way: _as if they were Muggles. If Granger had been a proper pureblood witch, she would have Summoned the thing and again, she and Longbottom would have gone their way and he would have died.

In the timeline in which Draco is alive, Longbottom is a pureblood wizard who was raised as if he were a Muggle. Neville told him that Gran wasn't sure that he wasn't a Squib. Granger is Muggle-born. Until she was eleven years old, she had no idea that she was a witch. Had they been other than they are—a Muggle-born witch and a Mugglish wizard—he'd be dead.

Longbottom the duffer. Granger the M---. No, that word isn't in his vocabulary anymore. The wizard who used _that_ word is dead, past all words anyway, lying in the locked ward at St. Mungo's.

***

The second day at Longbottom House is a Saturday, and on toward noon the fire in the front room flares green and Neville steps through, followed by Granger. Gran has prepared tea, and they are all sitting in the front room. No one has said a word, but it's clear this is some kind of family council; as the guest, he sits off to one side.

He's looking at Granger, though, every time she's not looking at him. His living eyes see something very different than the eyes of the dead boy did. She's wearing dark jeans and a jumper, and over them Hogwarts robes with the insignia of Gryffindor, and her wildly curling hair spills over her shoulders. It's the same person who made the dead boy flinch and twitch in annoyance, especially when she opened her mouth to talk. She doesn't have the same effect now. He remembers her kissing him, and wishes he could have that to replay now, because he'd make something of it.

She's nineteen and he's eighteen, and they both have had their corners rather thoroughly knocked off, by one process called life and another process called war. And he feels very much as if he's seeing her for the first time. He remembers her looking at his face—in that curiously open and tactile way—and wonders what she was seeing.

Yes, when they were both eleven, she was desperately annoying. But, he imagines, so was he. _Oh no, let's not waffle,_ he thinks. He was an unspeakably conceited little snob with two big pals to defend him against the consequences of anything he did…a horrid little creature who worshipped his piteously deluded father.

He can't believe he just had that thought, but then he thinks of the last year and then the letters from Azkaban, and he realizes that he feels terribly sorry for his father, who got trapped by something he didn't recognize in time. He doesn't want to think any more about his father, because this line of thought feels emotionally perilous in his fragile, newly hatched condition.

***

He watches Longbottom, who's looking at Granger with that diffident-but-yearning look that he realizes now has been a constant for as long as he can remember. And then Granger's eyes meet his in the mirror, and he notices that Gran is watching too. Augusta Longbottom misses nothing; that much he's learned in the last two days.

She is looking at him rather significantly as she tells Granger about the right sort and the other sort, and how she has to be careful about her alliances, but especially in marriage. Comes right to the edge of saying the Grangers would look down on an alliance with the Malfoys.

And while his former self might be lying all-but-dead in St. Mungo's, his present self still bears the family name, and the insult is unendurable—not because Granger is a Muggle-born, but because the Malfoys are _not_ a family to be scorned by anyone. He observes the silence of a good guest, but closes his hand on his teacup rather more tightly than necessary, and lets his feelings show in his eyes if nowhere else.

Gran is talking about how the work that Granger is doing at the Ministry could make her an extremely wealthy woman and—he doesn't gasp, but he does boggle a bit—Minister for Magic, which Gran then brushes off as an overrated honor. Then she talks a bit about someone named Tom Riddle, who apparently shared some of the Dark Lord's views about the blood purity question but nicked some seriously misguided Muggle notions about what to do about it, and whom Gran rates a fool.

He's never heard of the chap, and finally has to ask who he is.

The Dark Lord, apparently, before he styled himself Voldemort. Oh. And Gran appears to have been personally acquainted with him, or near enough to know some secrets. And then the conversation is back to Granger and her prospects and her reputation, and that's where he and Longbottom come in, because Gran tells them—_the three of them_—that whatever it is between them, she doesn't want to see it in the papers again. And she doesn't care what it is.

But she knows that there's something, and that it flows three ways.

And when Gran pronounces on the importance of there being no hint that Granger is doing anything improper, she looks right at Draco. Significantly. With disapproval.

He glares back.

She tells him not to take that line, because he's made enough trouble for all concerned, not least himself. And then come the words that rearrange everything.

As he continues to stare at her, she says, "It's been my displeasure to match wands with at least one Malfoy in my time, and your lot don't have the wit to know when they're beaten."

He can't take any more of this, especially after all they've suffered, and his father awaiting Azkaban. "Don't talk about my father!"

Gran smiles, an expression that looks surprisingly frightening on her. "I'm not speaking of your father, however much it might apply. For the record, it was your great-grandfather."

Draco won't drop his eyes, although he certainly quails inwardly.

"Not the least curious, are you? I don't suppose they would have told you. Wizards' duel in the Slytherin common room, spring of 1911? Apollonius Malfoy and Emily Chattox? Need I tell you who lost?"

"Emily Chattox," he says. "You." She can't be anyone else than the portrait-girl. The bone structure is unmistakable; subtract the dryness of age and turn the hair dark, and it can't be anyone else than … the girl whom he had undressed in imagination. The one he'd assumed was dead. Dead sexy, for certain. And she's Neville's Gran. He feels his face flush, and confirms in the mirror that it's burning an unseemly shade of glowing pink, a blush like a bad sunburn.

"No, Apollonius Malfoy. He spent his Easter holidays in the hospital wing. It was three days before he woke up, and another week before he looked human again. Completely unnecessary. He could have taken her at her word when she said no in the first place."

"No to what?" Granger asks.

"No to the Muggle-baiting, no to the marriage proposal, no to the attempt to blackmail her with her secret engagement to a Muggle. Sore loser, was Apollonius." She actually smirks, and there's a flash of the flirtatious girl in the portrait. "The fool proposed _after_ she'd knocked him off his broom in Quidditch practice. Not a very romantic proposal, either. He said something to the effect of 'Emily, my girl, you and I are the best breeding stock in wizarding Britain. It's only logical you should marry me.' And Emily's answer was that a reserve Seeker was no match for a champion Beater, and if the first demonstration didn't suffice, she'd knock him out of the air again.

"Eighty-seven years ago, and I still remember the look on his face."

The former Emily Chattox threw over Apollonius Malfoy for a Muggle. Well. That does explain why Father wouldn't discuss it. Rather awkward, that. But funny, in a way. Longbottom is laughing, and Granger is busy confirming things she's heard from some other portrait; apparently Gran got up to mischief using Felix Felicis on some Muggle portrait painter. Oh, this gets better by the minute. And she was a Slytherin. Longbottom the quintessential idiot Gryffindor has a Slytherin for a grandmother.

The boy who died would have been severely unamused by this. Draco, on the other hand, wants to giggle. And she flirted with him. Outrageously. In fact, he's blushing all over thinking about some of the things this woman, or her portrait avatar, has said to him.

"You're Emily Chattox." He shakes his head, then puts down his teacup. "And your portrait in the common room is an unconscionable flirt. She broke my heart before I was thirteen years old."

Gran says, "I won't take responsibility for what she's been up to on her own recognizance since we parted ways. No doubt the girl's bored." She smirks again. "And the Wizengamot would laugh your breach of promise suit right out of court, so don't even think about it."

It requires a real effort not to giggle, and even more of an effort not to turn yet a deeper shade of pink. He is sitting in a room with three of his real or imaginary lovers, and one of them threw over his great-grandfather. For a Muggle. Eighty-seven years ago.

And even at 104 years old, the woman has a wicked smirk.

***

The days in the Longbottom house are long and quiet. Gran seems to be about some business elsewhere, and there's an elderly house-elf that turns up in his peripheral vision whenever he strays near the Floo. Its expression looks a bit like Gran's, and he's very sure that it's nothing he wants to learn more about. He has the scars on his face to prove that house-elves are nothing to offend, whatever his father may have thought on the question. That chandelier didn't fall by itself.

He sits and studies. There's not much else to do, except to look out to Pendle Hill. He's not permitted outside, which is fine. In any case, the elf won't let him near the door, either, and it makes faces at him that look quite a bit like Gran in a dangerous mood. He wonders if people favor their elves after a while or if it's the other way around. He is quite sure he doesn't want to learn what the elf has in mind for him if he breaks the rules, and for the first time he wonders how much they talk among themselves. If so, Dobby can't have given his family much of a reference.

Neville stops in for brief visits, but he seems distracted. There are the children at Hogwarts, of course, and the approaching holidays. And then there's Granger, but he won't think about that. He wonders what they've decided about the children who attacked him. "This thing smells _planned,_" Granger had said. Apparently she did talk to McGonagall, because Derwent from St. Mungo's came to interview him, and took memories for the Pensieve about the incident. He started to shake again halfway through the interview, and she looked at him gravely and prescribed a calming draught.

Three days before Christmas, Andromeda Tonks comes to visit—steps through the Floo and greets Neville's Gran, who apparently knew about the visit. No one tells him anything, he thinks with some disgruntlement.

She tells him that he's going to receive a visit from his parents on Christmas Day, and there will be some news, which she will leave to his mother to convey. Then she gets down to the matter for her visit, which is his diplomatic relations with the Weasley clan.

He gets up at that point to leave the room. This is insanity, and it's really quite impertinent of her to imply that there's anything he should have to do with that ginger rabble.

She looks at him. "I am living with Molly and Arthur Weasley for the foreseeable future."

He stops just in the doorway. "I suppose that's quite charming for _you,_" he says, "but it has nothing to do with me."

She says he _will_ hear her out. And then that wretched shadow of an elf turns up behind him with its _look, _the same look it gives him when he too nearly approaches any means of egress. Well. And the expression on her face too much recalls Bellatrix in her virgin-martyr-of-Azkaban mode—immovable and irresistible.

And she has a wand and he hasn't—or at least, one that's of much use to him.

He sits down, and she sits down, and she quietly tells the whole tale, at least the part he has to do with: precisely what it was his father did to Ginny Weasley. Lucius might claim he didn't know what that cursed diary did, but he did know that it would open the Chamber of Secrets and he repeated to too many still-living witnesses his intention to purge Hogwarts of Muggle-borns while laying the blame at the feet of Arthur Weasley's youngest child. Her mouth twists as she says that part, and he remembers that her husband was Muggle-born. He doesn't remember how he was killed, only that it happened some time during the war…

She reminds him that he's publicly wished the Muggle-borns and blood traitors dead, too. He can't very well say that he didn't know what that meant, any more than he can say aloud that he didn't understand what torture was. He'd hated being shown up by Granger in the classroom and Potter on the Quidditch pitch—and particularly hated how his father pointed this up in front of other adults. He liked the idea of those sources of humiliation being _out of the way_ and _shown their place._

And everyone else assumed that Lucius Malfoy's son certainly knew what death and torture were, and it will avail him nothing to protest that his father kept him well away from what he was really about. With good reason, he realizes, having learned since that Greyback was his father's tool before he was Voldemort's.

Andromeda looks at him sharply, and he realizes that he hasn't been paying attention. She's talking about the things he's said to Ron Weasley, over the years, about Ron's mother and sister and father. How those things still rankle with Weasley the younger, and that he ought to try to make amends for the things he can help.

He says it ought to be enough that they won the war and he's headed to Azkaban. He's not going to abase himself on top of that. It will do no conceivable good. If, as she's said, the damage done to Ginny Weasley is irreparable, there's nothing he can do about that either.

She says only that he should think about whom he'd like to have for an enemy. And if he's up for the exercise, he might contemplate how his remarks might have felt to Ron Weasley. She tells Draco that she more than understands his resistance; she had grown up as a daughter of the House of Black, talking quite freely about the treatment that ought to be meted out to blood traitors—social ostracism at a minimum—and only really understood those words when she felt that punishment in her own person.

Which she continues to feel to this day.

She doesn't make any reference to what happened to him in that hallway at Hogwarts, but she does tell him that he has defenders he doesn't deserve, given his record. She reminds him that he owes Ron Weasley a life debt, and that he has done nothing to acknowledge it.

He has defenders he doesn't deserve. He has rescuers he doesn't deserve.

Once she has left, he feels the gravitational tug of the other world—the parallel branch of time in which he's a wrecked shell lying in the St. Mungo's locked ward, or maybe even further gone than that, like a victim of the Dementor's Kiss. That world is close, very close; it wasn't only on the morning after the attack that he looked at the clock and knew what was going on in the other world at that moment. That world is so much more likely than the one that's playing out now.

He wonders how little it would take to slip across the black mist that separates this unlikely life from what should have happened. On the other side, too, is the world in which he didn't make it that far because he died in a pile of flaming rubble in the Room of Hidden Things, burned up without a trace.

***


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer:** I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

***

Christmas Day is grim. There's an interminable dinner with Gran presiding over a table of elderly kin, including her cousin Algernon, whom Neville calls Uncle Algie, and Enid, whose relationship isn't clear, and a number of other dour and elderly witches and wizards—yet more distant cousins, he guesses.

Halfway through the meal he realizes that his own bullying of Neville was amateur at best, compared to what Uncle Algie hands out in the name of friendly encouragement. With a guest—best of all, one of Neville's schoolmates—providing a fresh audience, Algie is delighted to remember that his grand-nephew was a duffer at Potions, to tell innumerable stories about Neville's clumsiness as a child, and to recall the wager about whether he was a Squib. Gran's most dangerous look does nothing to close off this line of conversation.

(Neville tells him later that Algie and Gran have been at odds since childhood, when she Transfigured his hair into a nest of snakes. On the face of it, accidental magic, except that the nest included three different species of famously deadly North American vipers. The passing of ninety-seven years has done nothing to sweeten the bad feeling on Algie's part.)

Then the cousin sitting next to Enid, whose name is Eustace and who resembles a camel more than any other human being Draco has ever met, begins telling a story about some sort of minor scandal at the Ministry, which Gran quells—apparently it's not a story to be told outside the family, or in front of an enemy guest.

After that, they talk for a bit about the ill health of those not attending—in rather more than explicit clinical detail—which does nothing for his appetite. Once the casualty report has been read, this seems to have exhausted topics of conversation, so the rest of the meal proceeds in silence.

After the dishes are cleared, there's some wandering about and smoking of pipes on the terrace, and then the guests betake themselves home, to Draco's immense relief. Neville and his Gran step through the Floo to St. Mungo's to visit his parents for an hour or so. He settles in with his Arithmancy book in one of the chairs in the front room as the afternoon darkens and the house grows chilly. He wraps his cloak about him; the elderly elf flits through to menace him, but seems to be doing nothing about lighting a fire. They keep a hearth fire going in the kitchen for the Floo, but the elf won't let him near that one.

Neville had mentioned in passing that his Gran had lived poor for a long time after the Great War and it had made her frugal. Draco doesn't know what war he means, but he can certainly vouch for the frugality.

Late in the afternoon, Neville and Gran return, and then the elf shows up to alert Gran to a fire-call in the kitchen. She returns to light the fire in the front room; seconds later, it flares green and two pairs of Aurors step through, wands out, to dispose themselves against the opposite wall, covering the fireplace. The next people through are his father and mother, followed by a third pair of Aurors.

They wish him a happy Yule, and his mother embraces him, and then says she has news for him. He's immediately suspicious, because whatever it is, Andromeda felt the need to say something three days before. It's clearly something that's going to unsettle him. Gran shows them to the formal drawing room, where there's an argument about how many of the Aurors are going to accompany them into the room and how close they're going to stand.

One of the Aurors says in so many words that there will be no escape attempt on his watch.

To which Gran replies that there are parts of the house from which one can no more Apparate than from Hogwarts or Azkaban. And there is no Floo in the formal drawing room. Draco shivers, wondering what prompted such a design.

She smiles that bird-of-prey smile and further reminds the Auror that one of his colleagues spent some time in St. Mungo's some months back after an unauthorized visit to Longbottom House, so he might have some respect for the security precautions of the house, and the capabilities of its mistress.

She accompanies him and his parents into the drawing room, and sits at the far end, her wand hand negligently draped across her lap. Smiles an all-too-collegial smile at the two Aurors who accompany them into the room. Well, three against three would be fair, if one of the three weren't the Hogwarts dueling champion of her day. And if Draco weren't all but a squib, and his parents wandless—well, that's the family reputation, he supposes. Get a name as a Dark magician and no one is taking chances that you won't try some wandless nastiness.

The preliminary conversation isn't too different from the content of their letters; what makes it different, and much more reassuring, is their physical presence. His father looks much older; there are lines in his face that weren't there before, and streaks of white in his pale hair. A difference, too, in his bearing—he's a prisoner, not the master of a house. His mother seems preoccupied; she's telling stories about the rose garden, the peacocks, and the weather, as if he were fooled by this when he knows—has seen—that the house has been stripped of most of its furnishings and they're living in it like refugees. The nominal reason, he's been told, is that everything in the house is being treated as a Dark artifact until proven otherwise—hence the Decommissioning Committee's use of Ministry-issue tea things rather than anything belonging to the family. Of course, he wonders how much of the impounded property they'll ever see again.

Then his mother clears her throat with a strange little smile, and says, "Draco, we wanted to tell you—I wanted to tell you—in person." She pats his shoulder, and his father looks pleased and smug. "You're going to have a sister."

He doesn't understand why they're feeling the need to adopt a child, even as his worst suspicions are confirmed: he's being replaced.

"I'm afraid you don't understand," his father says. "Your mother is going to have a daughter. In the usual way."

Oh. In the _usual_ way. There's something in the manner between the two of them that makes his self-possession give way as he gets a flash of how one gets a child _the usual way_ and he feels his face burning_._ No. Not a picture he wants, but his father is looking at his mother with an expression that reminds him of … well, other couples he's seen. Something has changed between them in the last year or so, or maybe it was always there and he's being let in on the secret because he's come of age.

Now he understands why the Engineering Consultant—Mrs. Longbottom, Gran—spoke of the _children_ of the house, back in October, why Healer Derwent and his mother had that significant exchange of glances at the discussion of celebratory firewhiskey. They've all known since mid-October if not earlier, and haven't seen fit to tell him.

He's torn between two contradictory impulses: to take the news like a real man, the heir of the house, and to howl in outrage at being superseded as his mother's cherished darling.

His mother has taken his hand and is cradling it tenderly in hers as she tells him that the child's godmother has already been chosen, and it's Andromeda Tonks. She clarifies: it's more than a titular honor. Andromeda will be raising the child _if anything happens._

He readily translates: _when they go to Azkaban, _his sister-to-be will be raised in the Weasley enclave.

***

Draco thinks about the news far into the night, and doesn't rise until past nine on Boxing Day. Gran sends the inimical house-elf into the kitchen to organize him some breakfast, which at least is hot and savory. By the time he finishes, he's glowering into the empty plate trying to puzzle out the politics of Andromeda's disquisition on the Weasley-Malfoy blood feud, her choice as godmother, and the reason he's suddenly being blessed—he pulls a sour face—with a sibling. For that matter, he's suspicious of the reconciliation between his mother and her sister. Maybe his mother was already pregnant, or planning to be, when she made overtures—because he isn't sure he believes Andromeda's story of how she initiated the reconciliation.

It gives him a headache.

He puts on his cloak to see if he can go for a walk on the terrace without interference from the house-elf. In the next room, he sees something that pleases him even less—Neville and Granger, in one of the doorways to the terrace, locked in an embrace, both still wearing their outdoor things as if they've come back from a walk. She has one hand tangled in his hair as the other caresses his chest, and he's standing braced against the doorway, with his legs out to either side of her, presumably to reduce the difference in their heights so that she can kiss him without having to stand on tiptoe. It does look equivocal, though, especially given how close she's standing. His hands are caressing her shoulders and upper back—rather chastely, in fact, by contrast to how her hands are moving. Well, he knows from experience that Neville is the shy one. He has further confirmation that Granger is not shy, when she shifts her attention from Neville's mouth to his neck, and Draco sees that Neville's shirt is open to the waist inside his jacket, and she's pushing it down his shoulder, inside his coat, to bare him for her kisses. The expression on Neville's face is one he's never seen before—raw abandon, complete ecstatic surrender—and he's flushed and breathing hard. Every time Granger's lips (and probably teeth as well) touch his neck or his shoulder, he gasps.

This is nothing that Draco wanted to see right after breakfast, and his first thought is that they really ought to get a room. Surely, the mistletoe dangling on a red ribbon above their heads can't sanction that level of shamelessness.

He turns on his heel and walks back to the front room to see if serious contemplation of Arithmancy or History of Magic will do something to scour that vision from his memory. If someone had told him a year ago—no, even six months ago—that the duffer and the swot, the two most asexual beings he knew, would be steaming the windows with their passion ...

No, he doesn't want to think about it.

***

The old year has less than three days to live. Draco has been studying, trying to put out of his mind the five unacceptable things that, very much against his will, want him to contemplate them.

First, of course, is the list of war crimes defendants which is to be promulgated after the new year, along with the formal indictments. He knows that his name is on that list, cannot help knowing. Before parting on Christmas Day, his mother reminded him of the life debt owed her by Harry Potter. There will be at least one witness for the defense, he understands, and a very prestigious one. Andromeda Tonks is their go-between, and his mother reminds him that he will want to listen very carefully to what she says, because there are things that Andromeda understands about the post-war world that he ignores at his peril.

Second is the other world, which presses upon him at odd times of the day. Sometimes it's a trick of the light, or a scent. The other day, Granger walked by as he was reading and suddenly he was back in that hallway in Hogwarts that he can't help thinking of as the scene of his death. He gripped the arm of the chair and the hard carved wood against his palm brought him back, but only partially. She was standing next to him, wand covering his assailants. What he hadn't noticed at the time: a light spicy scent, sandalwood or the like. He looks at the clock or the calendar and marks the time that's passed in that world. Have they worked out what happened, or is that shell in St. Mungo's another unsolved piece of extrajudicial retribution in the post-war? Is it in the same ward as Longbottom's parents? No doubt they talk about what a nice piece of poetic justice that was, those who remember his ill-advised jeering at Longbottom in fifth year.

He's living on borrowed time in this world, but he's savoring these days because he wasn't supposed to have them at all. He would never have thought that the dour and brooding moors would be his idea of beautiful landscape, but every time he looks out the window he thinks: sanctuary. Time deals itself out in minutes now, as snow and fog obscure the distance.

Third is his parents' announcement of his new sister, to be born in June. He does the calculations: his mother is three months gone, and she definitely knew about it—_everyone but him_ knew about it—at the time that he was brought to the Manor for the Decommissioning of the perimeter defenses. He puts out of his mind the thought that he may well have arrived within a few days of her conception. It's ironic, actually, because he does remember desperately wanting a brother or sister when he was little, asking his mother about it, and even at five years old recognizing forbidden ground. It doesn't make the least bit of sense—not as dynastic politics, certainly—to create a child who has nothing to inherit but a disgraced name.

Fourth, well, fourth is Granger and Neville. He's not sure where they are living, actually. Neville is still at Hogwarts, but he shows up occasionally at meals with Gran. In spite of the post-war emergency, Granger appears to be on some sort of holiday from the Ministry. He overhears her saying to Neville that her part is done for the time being. The entire elaborate structure has been built, the searchable archive for the trials, though she has some doubts about what they're going to do with the technique after that, given the dubious things the Muggles have done with it.

Occasionally, she's closeted with Gran in some kind of business consultation. She comes and goes freely via the Floo and has spent the night a few times. She and Neville have taken at least one of the extended walks that they fancy, and come back laughing and rosy-faced. He has the definite sense that they're dodging him, and Gran as well, although Gran has a sly expression on her face that implies that she's not only not fooled but that she thoroughly approves of the situation.

The fifth thing is his slowly returning magic. He can manage _Incendio_ now, and he smiles bitterly to think that after _Lumos _and _Nox_, it was fire that returned first—now that it terrifies him. At least he's not in danger of setting his robes on fire because he can't manage the Muggle tools with which one lights a fire—cigarette lighter or match or flaming brand—and he reminds himself each time that the flames are safely confined to a hearth, and he is not in fact looking at the Fiendfyre conflagration in the Room of Hidden Things nor the nearly four-hundred-years-ago burning of the Manor. His father told him that story when he was so young that it wove itself into his nightmares as if he'd lived it.

For all the reminders in History of Magic that the major casualties of the Time of the Burning occurred on the Continent, he can't help reminding himself that numbers don't matter when you're the one who drew the lot of doom.

***

New Year's Eve there's a ball at the Ministry, and he's left once more in the company of Gran's shadowy house-elf—if company it can be called when a creature glowers at you and sidles in between you and any possible exit—and he tries not to feel sorry for himself. He's superstitious about invoking the other world, the one in which he died, because he's afraid of slipping through the barrier if he does. It's the uttermost dark of the year, and he can feel the gate between the worlds wide open at the hour of ghosts. In the Old Ways, this is the time you conjure the dead, or at least speak to them across the barrier.

It's hopeless to study in this darkness. In the interregnum before the return of the Dark Lord, on New Year's Eve his mother would light candles in front of the pictures of her dead. His father did not do it; he understands now that there was considerable bad blood between his father and grandfather.

He walks into the formal drawing room, and realizes that Mrs. Longbottom apparently follows the practice, too. A row of tiny candles glimmers on the deep mantelpiece in front of a row of photographs. Some of them are very old. There are witches and wizards in nineteenth-century Muggle clothes, whose fierce aquiline features share the cast of Gran's. They nod to him in flinty acknowledgment from their photographs, the flickering candlelight casting eerie shadows behind them. Then there are three Muggle photographs—a young round-faced man in military costume, and a baby in a lace gown, and another young man who looks as if he might be related to Gran as well, though when Draco looks closely, he realizes that it's just that they share the same sort of bone structure through the cheekbones and bridge of the nose; this fellow has a more Middle Eastern look to his features. And then there's another wizarding photograph, a strapping fellow in everyday robes open over dark trousers and a heavy woolen jumper, standing on the stone terrace of Longbottom House with Pendle Hill behind him. In his face, Draco recognizes something of Neville—his father? No, Neville's father isn't dead. This must be his grandfather.

Neville's Gran was a deep-dyed blood traitor, he realizes. That row of photographs is living evidence. He wonders who the three Muggles are, the two men and the baby. They have to be Muggles, because otherwise the photographs would be proper wizarding ones.

He remembers that he has a handful of photographs of the dead, too.

There's a whisper behind him, "Little Malfoy."

No one's called him that in a very long time. In fact, there's only one person who ever did. He turns to the portrait on the opposite wall. The silver snakes on her dress robes glimmer in the candlelight. "Emily," he says, and then corrects himself and makes a slight courteous bow. "Miss Chattox."

The portrait is stunning, not least because of the costume. Instead of a rowdy Quidditch player, this Emily is a witch in the full sense of the word. The smile is the same, and the dangerous look of the bird of prey, but there's also the seductive expanse of bare shoulder and bust. Yes, he'd guessed right about what was under the Quidditch gear. It's a good thing that he didn't see this one when he was thirteen, he thinks, or he never would have looked at any living witch. Even Pansy wouldn't have had a chance.

He says, "I know who you are now." She smiles and plays with her vial of Felix. He gestures toward it. "You were quite the Potions prodigy, they told me." She laughs.

"I hear the same of you," she says. "I've been visiting with your old Head of House."

He opens his mouth and closes it again. She gives him an exasperating smirk. "Mostly we talk Quidditch. He regrets that your generation didn't field a better team, but then you had other things on your minds, didn't you?" She adds, "And there was that regrettable practice of discouraging witches from playing. Quite unbalanced, you know. Now that Tom Riddle's out of the way for good, let's hope that changes."

He frowns. "Surely you aren't allowed into the portraits in the Headmaster's Office?"

"No, but we can visit within the House portraits." She smiles. "Haven't you read _Hogwarts, A History?_"

"Yes, but I don't remember that bit."

"The 1920 edition. They dropped the best parts after that, or you would have known about the duel." She laughs. "Blame your family's influence." She looks at him seriously. "It lacks an hour of midnight, little Malfoy. Don't you have candles to light?"

He takes the photographs out of the pocket of his robes and nods. "But I don't have a picture of Professor Snape."

"I can relay a message," she says. "And the elf will fetch you candles." The shadowy creature is behind him even as she speaks, and on the little table under her portrait, a row of seven candles appears, glowing in shallow glass dishes.

He sets up the pictures and acknowledges each in turn: "Pansy. Greg. Vince. Blaise." Then the ones Andromeda gave him. "Cousin Nymphadora." Then not quite believing it, "Cousin Remus."

And last, "Professor Snape." Immediately he says, "I'm sorry I didn't listen when you tried to find out what I was about sixth year." Adds, "I'm glad they're calling you a hero now." At the bottom of that article in the _Prophet,_ he'd noticed that Granger was lobbying to upgrade Snape's Order of Merlin to First Class. "Granger wants you to get the Order of Merlin, _First_ Class. She was a swotty pain in the arse, but fair-minded. Still is. A pain in the arse, I mean. Gryffindors are bad enough, but the swotty ones are worse." He smiles for the first time.

Emily smiles. "I'll tell him." She turns to leave the picture. "Happy New Year, little Malfoy," she says. And then she's gone, leaving empty the cream-and-rose interior with her shadow lightly sketched upon it.

"Cousin Remus." He can't believe he's acknowledging Remus Lupin as his cousin. The werewolf. But he wasn't Greyback. Not even all werewolves are alike. "You were a good teacher." He can't think of what else to say. It's too much to say that he's sorry about making fun of Lupin's shabby robes and poverty, because if he says that, he'll have to say something similar to the Weasleys. To Ron Weasley, in particular, who isn't dead and mildly looking out at him from a wizarding snapshot.

"Cousin Nymphadora." The pink-haired girl winks at him and waves. "I'm sorry I didn't know you. But Granger did." He blushes at the memory. "You must have been fun. If things had been different…" Through one of the shadow gates to the other world—to the possible worlds—he catches a glimpse of a field in summer, and two cousins, a girl and a boy, chasing each other through an orchard on racing brooms.

"Blaise." Zabini acknowledges him with his sardonic look. "I'm sorry you're dead." Unbidden, the tears start into his eyes. "You were right, I shouldn't have taken it all so seriously. Look where it got me."

"Greg." Now he's crying in earnest, because it was for nothing that he worked so hard to save Greg Goyle from the Fiendfyre, to have him cut down in the Hogsmeade High Street by an assailant still unknown. "I miss you…"

"Pansy. You are _still_ a mean girl, but I miss you."

"Vince. You bloody fool. You almost killed us all." He wipes his eyes. "But I still miss you."

And then there are the dead for whom he has no pictures: Bella. Rodolphus.

Bella. He's got words to say to her anyway. "Aunt Bella, you were wrong." He speaks into the darkness, into the unreachable void beyond the Veil. "I thought you were _awesome,_ the best aunt ever. You told me all those stories. You got me the Mark before I was of age. I wish you hadn't. I wish you hadn't been mixed up with the Dark Lord. I wish none of us had." He adds, "And you were wrong, you know. _You're a virgin till you've cast Cruciatus._ I know you didn't say that, but you meant it. And you were wrong."

He says, "They'll send me to Azkaban, but I'm not dying a virgin. And—aunt Bella—it was Granger. The Muggle-born. And Neville Longbottom."

The Dark Lord is dead, too, but for _him_ he has no words at all.

***

It's long after midnight that Neville, his Gran, and Granger return from the Ministry ball. Draco has fallen asleep in front of the hearth in the tall tapestried chair, with his face pillowed on the hard carven arm. His Arithmancy book has fallen closed and then dropped to the floor from his tucked-up knees. After talking to his dead, it had seemed most comforting to turn to the icy loves of numbers.

He sits up, nose still stuffy and eyelids burning.

Gran goes into the formal drawing room to extinguish the candles. Traditionally, they burn through the midnight hour, but must be snuffed before daybreak. She emerges and for a moment stands between the tall doors, looking at him with a curious expression. She saw his makeshift shrine, no doubt. He gets up and walks toward her. "Emily said it was all right," he says.

"So it is, lad," she replies, and hands him the candle-snuffer. "Happy New Year." Muggle tools in a wizarding house. Apparently, Longbottom comes by it honestly.

He goes into the drawing-room, now in nearly complete darkness except for the flames flickering on the table with the photographs of his dead. Emily has returned to her frame. "Professor Snape wishes you a happy new year," she says. He nods, and goes down the row of candles, using the tool as Emily instructs ("Put the little bell over the flame. It cuts off the air.")

Down the row, and each portrait in turn falls into darkness. When he's done, he gathers them up like a hand at cards, folds up the fan, and pockets them.

When he emerges, Neville and Granger are still sitting in the front room waiting for him. A new fire roars merrily in the hearth, an extravagance granted by Gran in honor of the holiday, apparently. Neither Gran nor the elf is in evidence.

They stand to greet him. "Happy New Year, Draco."

There's a cut-glass decanter standing on the tea table with three tumblers. Neville pours a measure into each of the tumblers. "Firewhiskey. Old Ogden's," he says, handing a tumbler to Draco.

Neville hands the other to Granger, who says, "You know, I never thought I'd like the stuff. But it grows on you."

Draco laughs. "Strictly ceremonial for me. I loathe the taste. Give me butterbeer or elf-made wine."

She says, "My dad loves butterbeer. Says it's the wizarding world's great contribution to civilization. That, and Quidditch."

Neville says, "Your dad likes Quidditch?"

"He took the _Prophet _from second year onward to follow the professional teams. Arthur Weasley got him hooked on it, I gather." She looks at the firelight reflecting in the decanter. "I miss my mum and dad something awful." Unspoken—and he's grateful for her tact—is that she'll have them back after the trials, once he's been buried alive in Azkaban.

Neville puts an arm around her and hugs her close, then lifts his tumbler. "To our absent parents," he says. They clink glasses and drink. Draco is grateful for Neville's parsimony with the liquor, as it burns his mouth and sinuses. It's an odd toast, considering the diverse reasons for absence: madness, house arrest, exile.

Neville refills the tumblers and nods toward Granger. "To the New Year," she says with a mordant smirk, "May we get out of it alive." They clink glasses; this time he notices that both Neville and Granger are watching him over their tumblers as they drink. They put down the tumblers and Granger says, somewhat awkwardly, "And to life debts." She says, "I think they run both ways. We're just as bound to you as you are to us."

To his surprise, she stands, crosses the space between them, and takes his hand, drawing him to his feet. Puts her hands on his shoulders and kisses him. "Happy New Year," she says. It's not at all the kiss he expects, and she repeats it, this time with her arms around him, just in case he missed the intent of the first one. It's a lover's kiss, sensual and appreciative and additionally heated by the lingering taste of firewhiskey on her tongue.

Then she takes his hand again, and holds it out to Neville, who rises to meet him and then sweeps him into an authoritative embrace, tipping his head back into a passionate open-mouthed kiss. Neville has never kissed him like that before, and he wonders if he's learned a thing or two from Granger.

He's overwhelmed, and more than a little aroused, by the time that Neville releases him. "I don't understand," he says.

Granger says, "We're with you, Draco. Until the end, whatever that is." She adds, "Whether that's Azkaban or something else."

"You mean… both of you."

"Yes," Neville says. "Both of us. And each of us separately."

"Though we cannot make our sun / Stand still, yet we will make him run." Granger smiles at him. She's quoting something, he can tell. It's not an incantation, at least not one he knows. His heart is racing. "We're alive, up to the very last minute," she says.

Neville glances at the window, and says, "Full-moon curfew, or I'd suggest a stroll on the grounds after."

***

_After._

The heat from the fire on the hearth is delicious on his skin, almost as delicious as the touch of skin on his skin.

The grim post-war is still out there, with the werewolf packs and the rogue Dementors and unspecified other horrors that Granger declines to discuss further. Neville tells him that she's under Fidelius now, through the end of the trials. She nods with tears in her eyes.

He's not going to die a virgin, certainly not after tonight, and he will do all right on the NEWTs, at least those that he can sit. The magic is coming back, just as Andromeda promised, though not quite quickly enough to make Transfiguration or Charms a realistic possibility.

He dozes against Neville's chest with Granger slowly stroking his hair, even as she slides into sleep herself. No, Hermione. Surely he can be on a first name basis with someone who does that so well, even if she does have dual citizenship in the terrifying world on the other side of the Leaky Cauldron.

In the morning, he has letters to write. He will send New Year's greetings to his mother and father, and to the little sister who will be born in June. He will write to Andromeda Tonks, to wish her well for the next year, and to greet his cousins' son Teddy. And he will ask her advice. She will be able to tell him how he might write to Ron Weasley, and possibly to Madam Rosmerta and to Katie Bell.

FINIS

(the end… of the beginning)


End file.
